Review: Soulless by Gail Garriger


Title: Soulless
Author: Gail Carriger
Genre: Historical, paranormal
Publisher: Orbit
Pages: 357
Copy Origin: Purchased from The Book Depository.
Get Your Own Copy From: Amazon.com, The Book Depository

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 is being rudely attacked by a vampire to whom she has not been properly introduced!

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire, and 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? Who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

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Posted on 17 January 2010 by Catherine. Categories: 1800s, England. No comments
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Review: Hidden Voices by Pat Lowery Collins

Title: Hidden Voices: The Orphan Musicians of Venice
Author: Pat Lowery Collins
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Pages: 352
Copy Origin: ARC picked up amongst many other books at a charity book fair.
Get Your Own Copy From: Amazon.com, The Book Depository

While studying under Vivaldi, three girls in a Venice orphanage forge their own notions of love in a sensuous, engrossing novel told in three narrative voices. It is a longing and search for love that motivates three girls living in the Ospedale della Pieta, an orphanage renowned for its extraordinary musical program. But for Rosalba, Anetta, and Luisa, the love they seek is not where they expect to find it.

Set in the early 1700s in the heart of Venice, this remarkable novel deftly weaves the history of Antonio Vivaldi’s early musical career into the lives of three young women who excel in voice and instrument. Under the composer’s tutelage and care, the orphans find expression, sustenance, and passion. But can the sheltered life of the orphanage prepare them for the unthinkable dangers outside its walls?

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Posted on 8 January 2010 by Catherine. Categories: 1700s, Italy. 1 comment
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Review: The Vintner’s Luck, by Elizabeth Knox

Title: The Vintner’s Luck
Author: Elizabeth Knox
Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 241
Copy Origin: Purchased from The Book Depository
Get Your Own Copy From: Amazon.com, The Book Depository

It’s Burgundy, 1808. One night Sobran Jodeau, a young vintner, meets an angel in his vineyard: a physically gorgeous creature with huge wings that smell of snow, a sense of humour and an inquiring mind. They meet again every year on the midsummer anniversary of the date. Village life goes on, meanwhile, with its affairs and mysteries, marriages and murders, and the vintages keep improving – though the horror of the Napoleonic wars and into the middle of the century, as science marches on, viticulture changes, and gliders fly like angels.

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Posted on 3 January 2010 by Catherine. Categories: 1800s, France. 1 comment
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