Changeless by Gail Carriger

Blurb: Alexia Tarabotti, the Lady Woolsey, awakens in the wee hours of the mid-afternoon to find her husband, who should be decently asleep like any normal werewolf, yelling at the top of his lungs. Then he disappears - leaving her to deal with a regiment of supernatural soldiers encamped on her doorstep, a plethora of exorcised ghosts, and an angry Queen Victoria.

But Alexia is armed with her trusty parasol, the latest fashions, and an arsenal of biting civility. Even when her investigations take her to Scotland, the backwater of ugly waistcoats, she is prepared: upending werewolf pack dynamics as only the soulless can.

She might even find time to track down her wayward husband, if she feels like it.

Warning: Spoilers

 Changeless is the second in the Parasol Protectorate series. The first one was good, but this one is even better. We finally learn something more of werewolves in this world and why he left Scotland. Mostly Changless is better because of the ending. I never imagined this particular ending.

Changeless was as funny as the last one. Alexia decides to beat an impertinent soldier with her parasol; she gets hit on by a hat maker who, oddly, wears men’s clothing. Also funny was the image of her husband ending up human, stark naked, in the middle of London and meeting one of the gay vampire’s minions in that state.

The ending is without doubt my favorite part of the story. Oh, the other parts were good. Especially the part where she was pushed off the dirigible and nearly poisoned. But the best part was when he threw her out for cheating on him. Not that she really did, but he discovered she is pregnant and could not believe the child was his. He shouts and rants and throws her out. It was deliciously dramatic. Truly, he should have realized that she turns him human, with full human fertility. Idiot. I hope she beats him with her parasol in the next one.

Grade: B

The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia A. McKillip

The Riddle-Master of Hed is an oldie but a goodie. According to wiki, it was first published in 1976. I first encountered it decades later in high school. I read the combined trilogy, because that’s what the library had. It was good than, and when I reread it, I found it was still good. Not a common occurrence with works I loved when I was 14.

When I first read it I was fascinated with the idea of a prince who lived in a normal house and promised to fix the roof of his pig herder. It didn’t seem especially prince-like. I also liked the idea of magic that bound the rulers to their land and a sort of higher education that taught riddles. On rereading, I still found these ideas interesting.

The first book ends on a cliffhanger. This did not trouble me, because I had the omnibus and could read the next immediately. If I hadn’t, I imagine that ending would have driven me crazy wanting the second book. Even with it, for a little while, I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. I couldn’t believe he was dead (when does the hero ever die?) but for a while it seemed as if he had. The second is also told from the point of view of her heroine, which I had forgotten, and which was also a jarring change. The third is good, with a really fantastic finish.

The Riddle-Master of Hed has its flaws, of course. At times, the dialogue seems forced and stilted. I would have liked to see heroine could use her powers more.  If you are familiar with other fantasy, I don’t think there any twists and turns. Even if you aren’t, I don’t think there are many surprised. I don’t mind any of these flaws.

Grade: A-

Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton

When Anita Blake meets with prospective client Tony Bennington, who is desperate to have her reanimate his recently deceased wife, she is full of sympathy for his loss. Anita knows something about love, and she knows everything there is to know about loss. But what she also knows, though Tony Bennington seems unwilling to be convinced, is that the thing she can do as a necromancer isn't the miracle he thinks he needs. The creature that Anita could coerce to step out of the late Mrs. Bennington's grave would not be the lovely Mrs. Bennington. Not really. And not for long.

Warning: Spoilers

Flirt is a short, quick read. Its title comes not for a business named Flirt, but because the dead woman was a serial flirt and because throughout the book, Anita Blake herself does a fair amount of flirting.

There is just one sex scene. In a lot of ways, considering the past few novels, this is a relief. In some ways not, because most of the interaction between Anita Blake and her captors revolves around sex. Naturally, they are insanely attracted to her and just as naturally, she rolls the mind of at least one. I am not surprised by this turn of events. She also acquired another man and that does surprise me. I thought she had enough. What is she going to do with him?

There are some interesting things. In the beginning of the books, a memory from her time with her grandmother surfaces, one that explains her hang-ups a little more. I suppose that is good, because the trauma from when her mother died, how she isn’t as blond as her family, how her college finance dropped her because she wasn’t white enough for his family, all that is getting a little old.

The most interesting thing is at the end, when something interferes with the zombies she raised. She raised a whole cemetery’s worth of zombies and some other power was there, something that interfered with her ability to control them. I suspect this something will figure prominently in the next novel. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Ms. Hamilton needed Anita to raise the whole cemetery in order to introduce this something, Anita being too powerful for this something to interfere if she had raised just one zombie. That may be why the client insisted on a human sacrifice and why Anita didn’t work all that hard to persuade him that she didn’t one to raise the zombie.

Grade: C+