This was a perfectly fine and entertaining book that I for some reason had a hard time picking up and making myself finish, and I feel almost no pull to continue and finish the series. This is such a huge turnaround for what my feelings were about her first series, The Parasol Protectorate, which featured the main character of this book’s mother. I was enchanted and delighted by those books.
Our main character here is Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama, and I’m not even going to go into her parental situation because it’s ridiculously complicated, as is her supernatural heritage, which I am also not going to even try to explain. Here, Rue is a young woman (this is adult fantasy like the first series, not YA) and acquires a dirigible—which she names the Spotted Crumpet. She and select friends and people who are soon to be friends fly to India to complete a diplomatic/trade mission. This was as uninteresting as it sounds.
Rue’s friends are fun, they are basically all the children of the characters from the first series (and Quesnel makes a return), and there are innumerable hijinkx that are gotten up to, some romantic pairings hinted at in future books, but I just really don’t care? I don’t know why.
I do want to say that I am entirely upset by the turn Carriger has taken in Alexia and Lord Maccon’s fates, and find myself mostly just annoyed that SPOILER he is succumbing to “alpha rage” or whatever END SPOILERS. I might continue this in the future if the fancy strikes me, and then again I may not. I am getting rid of my copy, at any rate.
