Soulless (Parasol Protectorate #1) – Gail Carriger
Grand Central Publishing Hachette, 2010
374 pages
RRP: AU$14.99
ISBN: 978-031-605663-2

Reviewed by Kate Smith

Soulless by Gail Carriger is simply too much fun!  With all the potential for disaster in the storyline, this novel of vampires and werewolves (and parasols) avoids all the stereotyping of current vampire novels and entertains in a most wonderful and amusing way.  Carriger employs a turn of phrase at just the correct moment, eliciting smiles and even giggles at times.  I so thoroughly enjoyed this story that I am currently hunting down the next, Changeless.

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Soulless – Gail Carriger
Orbit, 2009
384 pages
RRP: US$7.99
ISBN: 9780316056632

Reviewed by Liz Grzyb

Soulless is the first in a series of steampunk whodunits, The Parasol Protectorate, set in an alternate Victorian era, where werewolves and vampires have their own niches in Society just like the rest, and where the rules of etiquette apply to them just as much as everyone else. The heroine of Soulless is Alexia Tarabotti, is a spinster of the advanced age of twenty-six, whose prize possession is her trusty brass (but silver-tipped) parasol.

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