Gail Carriger: Soulless

From the back of the book-
First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.
Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire-and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.
With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia is responsibe. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?
I was almost put off this book in the first chapter when the heroine is found at a ball with a parasol. It just seemed so very wrong. However, I gave it a chance and I'm glad I did, things improve as the story goes on.
The world building is very good. Here paranormal creatures are recognised members of society. And just like the rest of society they are neither all good nor all bad but each species has its mixture of both. Cultural differences between the old and new world attitudes to the paranormal are wide but believable. Best of all, to my mind, the author doesn't get bogged down explaining the technology but focuses on the structure of society and her characters place within it.
The overall tone is light-hearted and there are some comic moments thanks to a vapid mother and half sisters and a best friend with no taste in hats.
I quite enjoyed this steampunk with a paranormal twist and I will be following up the rest of the series, with one tiny caveat. I'll be leaving quite some time between tales. Though I found the book vastly entertaining I feel that too much of this author's voice too soon would get irritating and I don't wan to spoil my fun.-Lynn

Lady Be Good - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Lady Emma Wells-Finch is on a mission – ostensibly in Texas to research one of St Gert’s Old Girls, in truth she has a far more important aim: to discourage the martrimonial interests of the Duke of Beddington an unpleasant man looking for his third wife and the mother of his heir. Sadly his few requirements are neatly met by Emma – well-born, comely, thirty or under, spotless of reputation, and virginal. Emma must somehow manage to disqualify herself, without allowing him to realise this is her intent, for if she refuses him outright, the Duke has unambiguously threatened to sell St Gertrude’s, the only place that was ever home to her, and where she is now a beloved principal.
Emma has a number of options – she’s considered getting a tattoo, or being seen drunk in public, but losing her virginity will be a move the Duke can’t possibly overlook. The mildly subnormal man her friend Francesca has arranged to escort her in Texas looks as though he’ll do nicely – virile, rugged, but a little slow on the uptake. When she discovers Kenny’s only chauffeuring her around as a favour to Francesca, and is really a golf pro on hiatus after being suspended by the PGA commisioner, Emma is taken back but not dissuaded – he’s still no intellectual giant. But all is not as it seems.
Lady Be Good returns us to Wynette, Texas, home of previous SEP couple Francesca and Dallie Beaudine from FancyPants. Despite the romance novel trope of a heroine both in her late twenties and virginal despite being personable, intelligent and without a moral imperative to wait, Emma is fairly convincing. Her habit of assuming facts not in evidence is a little surprising given her job, but for the most part the hurdles between the characters are believable, and the one moment when my heart sank over a Tragic Misunderstanding was resolved on the following page, instead of irritatingly hanging around for a chapter and a half.
Though not my favourite of Phillip’s novels I did enjoy Lady Be Good, which is without question an above average romance novel that combines convincing protagonists, well developed secondary characters and two strong secondary plots against a background of romance between people of seeming incompatibility. - Alex

Claudia Dain: The Courtesan's Daughter

A woman's infamous past is preventing her daughter from attaining a suitable match. Her pragmatic solution is to buy the girl a husband. She chooses an acceptable man, buys up his substantial debts, then offers him a clean slate if he agrees to her proposal. The daughter is outraged by her mother's action and refuses point blank to marry a man who could be bought for the purpose.
Then she sees him. And wants him. But only if he wants her in return, not her mother's money. And she can see only one way he could prove his devotion. He must be willing to pay for her.
She attempts to set herself up as a courtesan with dramatic consequences. Needless to say, in the end she gets her man.
This was, dare I say it, a genuine romp. A believable, well written romance with plenty of fun along the way. The naivety of the daughter to the realities of her mother's premarital way of life, together with the unglamorous details of the mother's memories of her courtesan days felt true. The hero managed to be heroic in spite of his less than ideal situation.
Sure, this is no accurate portrait of social history but let go and enjoy a frolic with this novel twist on the historical romance genre.

Christopher Moore: Bloodsucking Fiends

When a woman is attacked in an alley and wakes up a vampire she soon learns that her new lifestyle will require daylight support. To this end she employs a wannabe writer and grocery store night clerk to be her daytime errand boy. The two form a relationship and spend their time between testing out the limits of her new powers and trying to find the vampire who bit her so that they can kill him and, theoretically, return her to normal.
But when they do find the vampire in question their plan to kill him goes awry when the grocery store clerk and his colleges decide to steal his vast horde of treasure before blowing him up. The woman then steps in to save the vampire. He is, after all, the only one who can explain to her the how’s and why’s of her new life.
Once she discovers all she needs to know she shares her knowledge with her boyfriend and they incapacitate the old vampire with plans for a very long happy ever after.
A strange combination of horror, romance and mystery told with a humorous edge, this book really stood out as something completely different in the current explosion of the vampire stories.
I found the humour often laugh out loud funny. The characters’ behaviour seems both reasonable and believable, the more insane they acted, the easier it was to accept, and even identify with, them.
I would absolutely love to see this book translated to film. It would definitely be worth the price of admission. -Lynn

To see Alex's review of Bloodsucking Fiends click here

God Save the Queen! - Dorothy Cannell

Flora went to live with her grandfather when she was three, after her mother died. Though she thought he must be the king when she first saw him, Hutchins was instead the devoted butler at Gossinger Hall - the only things to which he was more devoted were silver (cleaned with polish made to his own recipe) and the Queen. Flora has been instilled with an awareness of appropriate behaviour for her station, but was given free reign to scamper around Gossinger Hall, at least until Sir Henry Gossinger suddenly married later in life. Now twenty-two, Flora flushes with attraction whenever she sees Gossinger nephew Vivian but has an otherwise staid life, until her grandfather's body is found in the old water closet. Though she doesn't know it, Sir Henry had only recently told his nephew, wife and aunt (who managed to move in by dint of not repacking her cases after the wedding five years ago) that he was going to change his will and leave Gossinger Hall to Hutchins. Was he murdered? And what secrets are being hidden?
This is a welcome return to Cannell, whose novels I revelled in over a decade ago. Her characters are vivid and lively, her plots interesting and original, and the setting is archetypally British. Somehow Cannell has managed to create a timelessness, so that God Save the Queen! could be set anytime in the last fifty years or more, which I found refreshing. The only quibble I had was the references to 'serviette' that occurred at several points in the novel - in the circles God Save the Queen! is set, 'napkin' would be the only possible term used.
I'm looking forward to continuing to renew my acquaintance with the divine Ms Cannell. - Alex

Spirit Willing, Flesh Weak - Julie Cohen

Psychic Rosie Fox is hoping to hit the big time during her tour of England, but she never expected to get a genuine premonition during a reading. Certain that a train will crash, Rosie flees her audience and runs to the nearest tube station, where she frantically tries to stop the train leaving. Taken into custody, Rosie's distressed and guilt-ridden when she learns six people died when the train crashed, but her manger's delighted - Rosie was caught on camera trying to stop people on the platform, and this is the best evidence of psychic ability she could have. Unfortunately a large part of the extra attention comes in the form of disgraced Times journalist Harry Blake, who now works for a small paranormal TV show.
Spirit Willing... is a fun and engaging novel that doesn't try to be more than it is - a light and fluffy, somewhat original rmoance. If I'd written this review a little closer to having read the book I'm sure I'd have been able to give more detail but for now suffice it to say that if another novel by Julie Cohen crosses my path I'll pick it up - Alex

Not the End of the World - Christopher Brookmyre

Only nine months til the end of the millennium and the end of the world is being prematurely hailed across the globe - nowhere more so than apotheosis of American cities, Santa Monica, California. Sergeant Larry Freeman, stuck on babysitting detail at the American Feature Film Market's annual convention, is perturbed to notice a counter-meeting across the street. It's televangelist Luther St James and his Festival of Light, calling hellfire down on one of AFFM's showcases, porn-star-turned-actress Maddy Witherson, daughter of a republican senator. Luther St John predicts a tidal wave sent by God to wipe out the defilers, and he's not taking any chances on being wrong.
Like the other Brookmyre's I've read thus far (and I'm working hard at staving off a glut), Not the End of the World more than delivers. Separate strands come together in a deeply satisfying way, the plot twists are unexpected, the characters sharp and deftly drawn, and there are smart comedic asides that catch the reader unaware; after pointing out a Nietzsche reference in an unexpected place, Freeman says he read it on a corn flakes box: "If I'd had Cheerio's instead of corn flakes I never would have known - Cheerio's are still running their Gems of Kierkegaard series." And the throwaway line that online news groups (which, almost ten years later, we can apply to a disturbingly large number of online forums, blogs and random sites) are "syntax meets chaos theory" is gold.
Thia isn't a book for sensitive, fundamentalist Christians, who may have trouble finding the humour in a Christian band singing "'Exit Only', an instruction to homosexual males as to the exclusive function of the anus." Brookmyre reads strongly angry at the hypocrisy of Christianity, and in many ways Not the End of the World is a call to pay attention to the negative affects of fundamentalism, in all its forms. Chapter eighteen in particularly vitriolic about where the philosophy 'love the sinner, hate the sin' falls under its' own weight, and completes with a summation of how little Christ's sacrifice has positively affected the world. Of course, you know this going in - the book's prefaced with a Bill Hicks quote: "Christianity's such a weird religion. The image you're brought up with is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love." Can't argue with that. - Alex

All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye - Christopher Brookmyre

Jane Fleming's life seems to have passed her by - once a hip, happening punk, her unexpected pregnancy saw her staidly married to Tom, a Catholic surveyor with a steady job and fixed ways. Now the mother of two fully grown children, Jane's plans to reshape her life - a course at night and then finally the university degree she deferred so long ago - are derailed by another baby, this time her daughter's. When a series of unlikely events throw Jane headlong into espionage and danger, Jane's motivated by the one thing that will have her stop at nothing - the safety of her family.
Very different from the previously reviewed The Sacred Art of Stealing, All Fun and Games is just as intricate and smart. Each section neatly dovetails into the next, each separate strand is seamlessly woven in, and every character is fully fleshed and unique. The influences are eclectic and diverse (from proto gaming's "you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike" to classical music) , there are satisfying scenes (like Jane's conversation with the owner of a 4WD she 'towed' after it was illegally parked outside Safeway) and amusing asides ("there was a helicopter tailplane visible behind the nearside of the house. Jane reckoned it safe to assume that the remainder of a helicopter was indeed attached, tailplanes on their own never having caught on as a garden ornament"), and a plethora of information about the ingenuity of Scots - without them we'd be living in the stone age.
The only caveat preventing me from whole heartedly recommending this book is my concern that you'll glut on Brookmyre's collected works, which will leave you heart broken that there's nothing left. Okay, that's more of a warning to myself! - Alex