In Which Gail Carriger’s The Parasol Protectorate, Book the First: Soulless Is Reviewed

Alexia Tarabotti seems to have been blessed or cursed with an overabundance of the ingredients that make the typical Victorian spinster. She reads far too much, she is too smart for her own good, she is neither docile nor demure, and she is not particularly beautiful. In fact, she is such a lost cause that her mother has elected to not even go through the exertion of attempting to marry her off, rather focusing all of her attention on finding husbands for her younger and more traditionally attractive daughters. And, oh yes, Alexia has no soul.

Vampire and werewolf stories would seem to have been done to death (please excuse the atrocious pun), as has this brand of urban fantasy to an extent, and yet Soulless, the first volume in debut novelist, Gail Carriger’s The Parasol Protectorate series, makes these supernatural creatures and this genre feel shiny and new again, thanks to the help of supremely witty writing, a meticulously developed alternative history and mythology, and a cast of characters so colorful and so vivid that after only a few pages, the reader feels as if he or she has known them for years.

On her endlessly entertaining blog, Carriger describes her sparkling new series as “urbane fantasy” (a term she borrowed from fantasy author, Carrie Vaughn, and applied to her own work), and really, there is no better, more concise manner with which to label it. Soulless is a horror/romance/mystery/steampunk/alternative-history/fantasy/satire/science-fiction/comedy-of-manners set in a Victorian-era London populated with vampires, werewolves, parasols, and dirigibles, that blends Stoker with Austen, the Bronte sisters, a splash of Dickens, and just a hint of Jules Verne and Mary Shelley. Fans of Victorian literature will be especially delighted to discover that Carriger uses copious words and references from the time period. If, for example, one does not know what it means to be “cut” in public or what a “bluestocking” is, some light outside research may be useful. This work was obviously a labor of love for Carriger, whose blog is filled with fascinating highlights of her own research, as well as exceedingly amusing geekery such as how long it would take to get from London to Glasgow in 1874 by train, horse, werewolf, and dirigible.

Carriger has clearly thought a great deal about the universe she has created, more so than many other authors seem to have done. Her thesis revolves around the concept that, by Victorian times, the supernatural has come out of the closet, so to speak. Rather than simply add vampires and werewolves to British society for a lark, though, she has seriously considered what the introduction of these elements would have done to Western history. And rather than completely alter history as we know it, she brilliantly uses the vampires and werewolves’ effect as an alternate explanation for why the world is the way it was back then and even today.

On top of that, The Parasol Protectorate presents what is perhaps the most original twist on vampire and werewolf mythology to ever appear in the genre. Carriger’s vampires and werewolves are not devoid of souls. In fact, they may have too much soul. In Alexia Tarabotti’s world, it is very hard for a human to be transformed into a supernatural creature; most of them don’t survive the attempt. Those that do seem to have an excess of soul, so much so that they are able to live on after “death.” On the opposite end of the spectrum, Alexia, as previously mentioned, has no soul whatsoever, a condition which not only ensures she herself can never be turned but which has the magical property of temporarily stripping of its powers any supernatural creature that she touches, for the duration of their physical contact.

Carriger takes all of these utterly superlative ideas and marries them to absolutely delightful characters. Firstly, there is, of course, Alexia, who could give Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre, and a whole slew of other Victorian fictional females, a run for their money. What makes Alexia so deliciously droll is that she is both fully a product of her time as well as a bit of a rebel. She is simultaneously a proper lady who tries to uphold the tenets of decency and appropriate behavior upon which the entire social superstructure that surrounds her is built, as well as a willful, obstinate person who constantly chafes at the stifling constraints Victorian propriety imposes upon her.

And then there is Lord Maccon, Earl of Woolsey, the similarly hotblooded local head of the BUR (Bureau of Unnatural Registry)–a law official who finds himself, throughout the novel, in a charged dance of emotion with Ms Tarabotti, a woman he finds so maddening (and maddeningly alluring) she is actually able to get under his otherwise impenetrable werewolfy skin. Their clash of the titans/reluctant romance works flawlessly both as a pastiche of/commentary on romantic novels of the time (Lizzy/Mr. Darcy, Jane/Rochester, Heathcliff/Catherine, and even further back, say, Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick), as well as a thoroughly engaging and deeply entrancing story in its own right. It must be very difficult to pull off scenes that are not only funny but genuinely sexually charged, as well, and yet Carriger manages them with effortless grace.

Other priceless characters include the flamboyant, surreptitiously wise Lord Akeldama, a Wildean vampire who habitually indulges in the love that dare not speak its name with a slew of buff groupies and whose story eventually proves to be far more affecting than it might have otherwise seemed at first glance, the silly yet lovely and kind Ivy Hisselpenny, Alexia’s best friend with a propensity for wearing hideous hats, the American scientist, Mr. MacDougal, another person who proves to be consistently surprising, up until the very end, and Alexia’s rather dreadful mother, Mrs. Loontwill.

What might have impressed most of all about this truly beautiful novel, however, is not any one of this multitude of strong points, but how seamlessly all of these strong points interact with one another. Soulless would fit comfortably on the shelf of any of the aforementioned genres from which it samples. It is not, however, just a monumentally successful hybrid but a novel that is so confident and so ingenious that one can find oneself easily deluded into believing that its author invented it entirely from wholecloth. For this remarkable accomplishment, it deserves its own shelf. Gail Carriger has managed to create a supernatural novel that not only has as its heroine a woman who is most definitely not a vampire slayer–she is, rather, a proponent of the rights of the “undead”–but even more impressively, tells a tale of romance and adventure, involving vampires, werewolves, Promethean monsters, and more, that is not even remotely Goth.

Buy:

Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate #1) by Gail Carriger

Related posts:

1. In Which Gail Carriger’s The Parasol Protectorate, Book the Second: Changeless Is Reviewed
2. In Which Gail Carriger’s The Parasol Protectorate, Book the Third: Blameless Is Reviewed
3. Closed for Maintenance: The Gates
4. The 10 Best Books I Read in 2009
5. Super Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant

Tagged as: Books, Gail Carriger, Soulless, The Parasol Protectorate