BookTalk
Alexia Tarabotti is terribly inconvenienced.
Infant-inconvenienced to be exact.
A woman whom no one would call maternal, when Alexia married Lord Maccon, head of the Woolsey werewolf pack, she thought children weren’t an option…her husband had been, technically, not-human for a few hundred years or so. That does not mean that Alexia was unfaithful in any way. Her dear husband should realize that unexpected does not mean impossible…
But the inconvenience of a child that can’t be explained instead sends Conall Maccon into a tail-spin of formaldehyde induced drunkenness. He’s left his Beta to hold down the fort at the worst possible moment for Lady Maccon has absconded to Italy, Lord Akeldama has fled town in pursuit of a stolen item, and the rest of the supernatural society has decided that Alexia and her infant-inconvenience need to die.
The question of the hour is how long will it take for Lord Maccon to come to his senses and beg for forgiveness. Because, Alexia is a little busy fighting off Vampires, Templar Knights, and mechanical ladybugs. A husband by her side would be a great help…
Review
This book is a necessary evil. It reads as a linking book. Almost like a bridge between books two and four. Because, while the text was filled with Carriger’s trademark wit and tongue-and-cheek steampunk creations the plot itself is a bit ‘light’. I’ll say ‘light’ and not ‘weak’ because it’s a necessary story for Alexia and Conall. At the end of book two we find Alexia pregnant and it is (apparently) un-explainable between her and Conall.
My hunch was that the curse breaker plague was going to be the explanation. I mean, it did turn all supernatural completely human…doesn’t that mean reproductive functions will work again as well? Seemed simple enough to me. Heck, even if Carriger didn’t want to take it that far I was willing to accept that given the uniqueness of their relationship (preternatural and supernatural are never to mix in this society) that no one had attempted to cross-breed. Alexia’s touch makes Conall mortal – thus he functions as a mortal man whilst having relations with his wife. This would make a baby possible, no?
No. Apparently not. My mind is not intelligent enough for Carriger’s aether-theory. I guess it’s far more difficult than my pedestrian ponderings. And I’ll admit that by the end of this installment I was still quite confused as to how it scientifically happened. Even Meyer gave me a vampire baby-making explanation I could accept. Forget that part during your reading? Yeah, I got it off her website. Don’t judge. You know you were curious too.
Curious, because you need these fantasy worlds to be completely rational if you are going to accept them. The author needs to build rules and stick to them. You can break them only if there’s a super secret Plan B rule that will make even more sense than Plan A did. I won’t say that Carriger’s pregnancy explanation broke her world for me. Finding and explaining the pregnancy was one of the two reasons for this novel. It was more like I started skimming the explanation. I ‘Smile and Nodded’ at the explanation and politely waited for it to stop talking. Like math involving more than basic addition/subtraction…or integers higher than I can count on my fingers…I just stopped trying to understand and accepted that it did in fact make sense. Someone clearly smarter than myself obviously figured it out. Time to move on now, blah, blah, blah…
It may seem like I harp on this issue a bit, but understand that aside from Lord Maccon’s issue of sobering up and apologizing to his wife…this is the entire plot of the story. The mysteries of the Templar Knights were simplified. The issue of the child’s supernaturality (word?) is simplified. Even the tease of finding out more about Alexia’s father is in the end simplified and then forgotten about. So the complexity of the one thing I thought could actually be simplified was an issue for me.
I still enjoyed the read. I was in the mood for witty Victorian conversation. That play between manners and the absurd that Carriger does so well. Snappy dialogue and chapter titles abound. Just know that in this series the third title is just a hop skip and a jump away from the fourth. I’ll just say that the fourth should pack a bit more of a plot punch to pick up the ‘lightness’ of the third.
Rating: 3.5/5 Proper, polite, and just the right bit of the absurd save this tale of marital discord…Because without it, it’s 200-odd pages of waiting for an apology…
Sara O
thelibrarianreads 