by Gail Carriger, 374 pages Alexia Macon (née Tarabotti) may now be the lady of a castle full of werewolves and the newest addition to the Queen's unnatural advisory council, but she still has to find time for tea with her friend Ivy (whose taste in hats is as abysmal as her personality is warm and melodramatic), her ridiculous family, and chasing unsightly regiments off her front lawn. The last thing she needs is to have to run after her spontaneously absent husband--to that backwater, Scotland, no less! and on a dirigible!--when he fails to inform her of the rather important details of his current mission. Something is mysteriously dispelling unnaturalness (vampires and werewolves temporarily return to being human--and mortal--and tethered ghosts are exorcized) and suspicious eyes turn to Alexia and her innate nulling abilities. If she's going to get to the bottom of things, and get her workaholic husband back home to civilization where she can keep an eye on him, she'll have to brave far deadlier dangers than airsickness and country "manners."
Book Two is even more fun than Book One and ends on an unexpected, except in 20/20 hindsight of course, cliffhanger. With its aether-based airship and communication technologies, this installment ventures further into steampunk territory. Alexia picks up a new admirer--or threat?--in the person of a genius French inventor / haberdasher who turns heads and raises eyebrows in her trousers and top hat. The new character additions work nicely, as does the shaking up of other relationships to either comedic or dramatic effect, and keep the story and its inhabitants open to growth.
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