Meet: Alexia TarabottiOccupation: Lady who likes to sleuth
Location: London
Main mode of transportation: carriage
Genre: Steampunk, Paranormal, Romance, Vampires, Werewolves
~ by author, Gail Carriger
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Steampunky excerpt from Soulless:
Outrageous was a very good way of describing Lord Akeldama. Alexia was not afraid of outrageousness any more than she was afraid of vampires, which was good because Lord Akeldama was both.
He minced into the room, teetering about on three inch heels with ruby and gold buckles. "My darling, darling Alexia." Lord Akeldama had adopted use of her given name within minutes of their first meeting. He said after that he just knew they would be friends, and there was no point in prevaricating. "Darling!" He also seemed to speak predominantly in italics. "How perfectly, deliciously, delightful of you to invite me to dinner. Darling."
Miss Tarabotti smiled at him. It was impossible not to grin at Lord Akeldama; his attire was so consistently absurd. In addition to the heels, he wore yellow checked gaiters, gold satin breeches, an orange and lemon striped waistcoat and an evening jacket of sunny pink brocade. His cravat was a frothy flowing waterfall of orange, yellow, and pink Chinese silk, barely contained by a magnificently huge ruby pin. His ethereal face was powdered quite unnecessarily, for he was already completely pale, a predilection of his kind. He sported round spots of pink blush on each cheek like a Punch and Judy puppet. He also affected a gold monocle, although, like all vampires, he had perfect vision.
He settled himself on the settee opposite Alexia with fluid poise, a small neatly laid supper table between them.
Miss Tarabotti had decided to host him, much to her mother's chagrin, alone in her private drawing room. Alexia tried to explain that the vampire's supposed inability to enter private residences uninvited was a myth based upon their collective obsession with proper social etiquette, but her mother refused to believe her. After some minor hysterics, Mrs. Loontwill thought better of her objections to the arrangement. Realizing that the event would occur whether she willed it or no, Alexia being assertive – Italian blood – she hastily took the two younger girls and Squire Loontwill off to an evening card party at Lady Blingchester's. Mrs. Loontwill was very good at operating on the theory that what she did not know could not hurt her, particularly regarding Alexia and the supernatural.
So Alexia had the house to herself, and Lord Akeldama's entrance was appreciated by no one more important than Floote, the Loontwills' long-suffering butler. This caused Lord Akeldama distress, for he sat so dramatically and posed with such grace, that he clearly anticipated a much larger audience.
The vampire took out a scented handkerchief and bopped Miss Tarabotti playfully on the shoulder with it. "I hear, my little sugarplum, that you were a naughty, naughty girl at the Duchess's ball last night."
Lord Akeldama might look and act like a supercilious buffoon of the highest order, but he had one of the sharpest minds in the whole of London. The Morning Post would pay half its weekly income for the kind of information he seemed to have access to at any time of night. Alexia privately suspected him of having drones amongst the servants in every major household, not to mention ghost spies tethered to key public institutions.
Miss Tarabotti refused to give her guest the satisfaction of asking how he knew of the previous evening's episode. Instead she smiled in what she hoped was an enigmatic manner and poured the champagne.
Lord Akeldama never drank anything but champagne. Well, that is to say, except when he was drinking blood. He was reputed to have once said that the best drink in existence was a blending of the two, a mix he referred to fondly as a Pink Slurp.
"You know why I invited you over then?" Alexia asked instead, offering him a cheese swizzle.
Lord Akeldama waved a limp wrist about dismissively, before taking the swizzle and nibbling its tip. "La, my dearest girl, you invited me because you could not bear to be without my company a single moment longer. And I shall be cut to the very quick of my extensive soul if your reason is anything else."
Miss Tarabotti waved a hand at the butler. Floote issued her a look of mild disapproval and vanished in search of the first course.
"That is, naturally, exactly why I invited you. Besides which I am certain you missed me just as much as we have not seen each other in an age. I am convinced that your visit has absolutely nothing to do with an avid curiosity as to how I managed to kill a vampire yesterday evening," she said mildly.
Lord Akeldama held up a hand. "A moment please, my dear." Then he reached into a waistcoat pocked and produced a small spiky device. It looked like two tuning forks sunk into a faced crystal. He flicked the first fork with his thumbnail, waited a moment and then flicked the second. The two made a dissonant, low-pitched strumming sound, like the hum of two different kinds of bee arguing, that seemed to be amplified by the crystal. He placed the device carefully in the center of the table where it continued to hum away discordantly. It was not entirely irritating, but seemed like it might grow to be.
"One gets accustomed to it after a while," explained Lord Akeldama apologetically.
"What is it?" wondered Alexia.
"That little gem is a harmonic auditory resonance disruptor. One of my boys picked it up in gay Paris recently. Charming isn't it?"
"Yes, but what does it do?" Alexia wanted to know.
"Not much in this room, but if anyone is trying to listen in from a distance with, say, an ear trumpet or other eavesdropping device, it creates a kind of screaming sound that results in the most tremendous headache. I tested it."
"Remarkable," said Alexia, impressed despite herself. "Are we likely to be saying things people might want to overhear?"
"Well, we were discussing how you managed to kill a vampire, were we not? And while I know exactly how you did it, petal, you may not want the rest of the world too know as well."
Alexia was affronted. "Oh really, and how did I do it?"
Lord Akeldama laughed, showing off a set of particularly white and particularly sharp fangs. "Oh, princess." In one of those lightening fast movements that only the best athletes or a supernatural person could execute, he grabbed her free hand. His deadly fangs vanished. The ethereal beauty in his face became ever so slightly too effeminate and his strength dissipated. "This is how."
Alexia nodded. It had taken Lord Akeldama four meetings to deduce she was preternatural. Estranged from the hives as he was, he had never been officially informed of her existence. He considered this an embarrassing blight on his long career as a snoop. His only possible excuse for the blunder was the fact that, while preternatural men were rare, preternatural woman were practically non-existent. He simply had not expected to find one in the form of an overly assertive spinster, enmeshed in the thick of London society, companioned by two silly sisters and a sillier mamma. As a result, he took any opportunity to remind himself of what she was, grabbing her hand or arm on the merest whim.
Scene from Soulless by Gail Carriger
© 2009. All rights reserved.
~ by author, Gail Carriger
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Soullessby Gail Carriger - my review
Published: 2009
Romance steam gauge: medium
Description from the amazon:
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?
SOULLESS is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London: full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.
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not a good idea to read the description to Changeless
if you haven't read Soulless
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Changelessby Gail Carriger
Published: 2010
Romance steam gauge: medium
Description from the amazon:
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.
* image source silhouette
***steampunk book giveaway - courtesy of author***
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