one day a tortoise will learn how to fly

Soulless by Gail Carriger

What a silly, poufy read! Set in Victorian London, the story follows the misadventures of one Alexia Tarabotti, spinster, in all of her vampire slaying, werewolf chastising, and treacle eating glory.  In this world, vampires and werewolves have been indirectly on the political scene for ages, but during the early fifteenth century, they became tired of living playaing politics in the shadows and thus came into power more directly by revealing their monster-y selves to the world. This results in the Renaissance. Further along in history, England becomes a haven for the supernatural, embracing them and using their prodigious powers and knowledge, to TAKE OVER THE WORLD, er, establish the British Empire. Werewolves, vampires and ghosts are the three types of supernatural beings inhabiting this Victorian Earth, and apparently these beings are the result of having too much “soul”. Carriger is never quite clear on the mechanics of her supernatural beings, but it lends a sense of the numinous to the novel, rather than detracting from it. Alexia, on the other hand, has no soul at all, which means she directly counteracts the effects of having too much soul, thus when she touches a werewolf or a vampire, they turn into mortals. Clearly, antics will ensue.

Needless to say, despite some problems with the world building* , I really, really enjoyed it. Alexia is a splendid protag and I totally, totally loved her. Anybody who is worried about messing up their dress and what’s for dessert after whacking a vampire in the nether regions with a brass parasol has got my attention. Alexia is stringent, intelligent, stubborn and something else. I loved her voice. I also enjoyed the romance between Alexia and Lord Maccon. Maccon is obviously an Alpha male character. After all, he is the alpha of the main werewolf pack in London, and yet he never comes off as a douche-bag or asshat. He asks Alexia her opinions, treats her like an equal and loves her for herself… and her prodigious bosoms, but hey, he’s a man, so we’ll forgive him. I have a love/hate relationship with the Victorians, mainly because they were assholes. I usually try not judge history too much, but Victorian ideas of race, gender and class are partly to blame for a large chunk of the world’s problems today. However, Carringer’s tone is so silly and wonderful, that I just sort of ignored most of my objections to her world building. I hope, however, that she will add some more significant female characters and that they will be as wonderful as Alexia in the next book. Ivy, Alexia’s best friend is the next most significant female character and although she is personable, she is nowhere near as well developed as almost all of the secondary male characters, such as Professor Lyall, the werewolf pack’s beta male, or Floote, the Tarrabotti’s butler.  But all in all, Soulless was an absolutely charming read.

*most of them having to do with the irritation I experience when modern writers set things in Victorian times and proceed to point out how society expected women to be pretty worthless and then proceed to prove that modern writers still think that female characters aren’t as interesting as male characters thus sorta making them asshats for pointing it out in the first place. I mean, read Jane Austen. Her characters live and breathe the time period (what with her books being written in the period, but whatever) and all of the weird complex social mores of the time, and yet all the female characters are believable, human individuals. I don’t like the whole, “These societies devalued females, so therefore women from these societies must have been cardboard cutouts of the male expectations of their time period and so must have just been set dressing for the historical goings on.” Yeah, except that sorta writes women completely out of history. So no woman in a male dominated society was ever an individual or anything, ever, right?