Soulless by Gail Carriger
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. 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 responsible. 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?
For a book called Soulless, there isn’t much reference to what we think of as a soul. In Alexia Tarrabotti’s world, soul is how people explain the supernatural. Those who can be successfully changed into werewolves and vampires have an excess of soul, most have the normal amount, and a very few (like Alexia) are said to have none, thus explaining how she can negate the vampire and werewolf characteristics just by touch.
The relationship between Alexia and Lord Maccon was very well drawn. I got a sense of how well suited they are to each other which can be rare - sometimes people just seem to end up together because the plot says so! I look forward to spending more time with Alexia and Lord Maccon, and I hope that Lord Akeldama plays a part in the next book as he is a very intriguing character.
I picked up on a few Americanisms that slipped though the copy editing, but overall the Victorian atmosphere was well done. However, the steampunk trappings didn’t quite work for me.
In one scene, when Alexia is riding in a carriage, the occupant shows off the latest technology – a combustion engine to raise a large sheltering parasol and a mechanical (hand cranked) water boiler. I was jolted out of the story because I couldn’t (and still can’t) figure out how you can have a mechanical water boiler. Unless this means using an early form of electrical power? And a combustion engine to raise a giant parasol? However large the folding parasol, this just seems like overkill. I really think the two devices should have been powered the other way around.
To be fair, I have similar problems with the steampunk aspects of Catherine Webb’s Horatio Lyle books and Michael Pryor’s The Laws of Magic series, and that doesn’t stop me from reading them. I just need to train my suspension of disbelief to extend to steampunk as well as magic!
While some of the humour didn’t quite work for me – Lord Akeldama’s speech patterns and Ivy’s lack of fashion sense just seemed a tad contrived - I found Soulless to be a light and refreshing change to the darker urban fantasy I tend to read. I’m definitely going to read the sequel, Changeless, when it is released in March 2010.
If you are curious about Soulless, why not listen to an excellent audio reading of the first chapter?
The Safety Song
from The Sounds of Science
a small group of graduate students and recent alumni of UC Berkeley that share a common love of science and music. Our aim is to promote awareness of science to the community of all ages through fun music videos available free on the internet.
Periodic Table Table
A Periodic Table Table from Wake Forest Univerity, North Carolina.
1950’s Motorbike Display
Italian police putting on a motorbike riding display in the 1950’s.
Why Every Country Has A Different Plug
Making sure I have the right converter for the countries I’m visiting has just become a standard part of travelling. I was lucky on my recent travels that all the countries I went to used the same plug, so I only had to take one converter. I brought a beautiful lamp in Turkey that I need to alter the plug on so I can use it in Australia. (Yes, I could buy a Turkey to Australia converter, but why bother finding one when I can just cut the old plug off and re-wire an Oz/NZ one on?)
I’ve never stopped to think about why countries have different shaped plugs, plugs with fuses, plugs without earths,or different voltages. Luckily, someone else wondered about this, and has shared their infomation in an entertaining article at Gizmodo:
If you buy a phone charger at the airport in Florida, you won’t be able to use it when your flight lands in France. If you buy a three-pronged adapter for le portable in Paris, you might not be able to plug it in when your train drops you off in Germany.
And when your flight finally bounces to a stop on the runway in London, get ready to buy a comically large adapter to tap into the grid there. But that’s cool! You can take the same adapter to Singapore with you! And parts of Nigeria! Oh yeah, and if said charger doesn’t support 240v power natively, make sure you buy a converter, or else it might explode.
Basically, the best way to guess who’s got which socket is to brush up on your WW1/WW2 history, and to have a deep passion for postcolonial literature. No, really.
Read the rest of this fascinating article here. (But while I get the WW1/WW2 connection, the relevance of postcolonial literature continues to evade me.)
Photos From Palmyra
These are some of my favorite photos of Palmyra, Syria.
Palmyra is an amazing ruined city in the middle of the desert in Syria. Pretty much my entire recent holiday was organised so I could finally visit. And it was worth it - beautiful, unique, and not at all crowded with tourists. I am definitely going back!
The Great Colonnade, looking towards the Monumental Arch
The Sanctuary of Bel through one of the smaller openings on the Monumental Arch
A crumbling tower tomb seen from Elahbel’s Tower
Letters of Note
I just discovered Letters of Note, a surprisingly interesting new website.
Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. Scans/photos where possible. Fakes will be sneered at. Updated 2-3 times every weekday.
I Was Ready To Sink Into The Earth With Shame - a 9th Century Chinese form letter for apologising to one’s host for being embarrassingly drunk.
The Masked Letter – written in 1777, and an example of an early code.
The Result Would Be A Catastrophe - a memo from an engineer who raised concerns about the exact issue that led to the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion in 1986.
