Hi readers,
Today it's the turn of the 4th Parasol Protectorate book; Heartless. The plot of this one does follow on, though there is a bit of a time gap of a few months. A now heavily pregnant Alexia has decided to have her unborn child adopted by her vampire friend Lord Akeldama as a hope to stop the vampires from killing her and the baby as they believe the child to be a threat to them. Of course, Alexia then ends up moving next door the Lord Akeldama, but secretly living in his second best closet, so she can help bring up the baby.
For the moment though, she has to deal with a threat from a ghost about the Queen being killed and that is the main plot of the book. The twist about the Queens is nice and I think it took me awhile to figure it out. What's also nice that we get cut scenes to the ghost thinking and talking. Of course, the name of the ghost is hidden up till the end, but if you close read the book, it's easy to pick up. I know some readers can find cut scenes likes these jarring, but they fitted in well enough for me. I guess because the plot does cut to a number of different people anyway.
I did think it was a little too much for eight month pregnant Alexia to deal with though and I get that the author is going for high drama, but I just felt given the historic time setting that Alexia should have really been aware of of how dangerous chasing after the supernatural and hell-bent inventors can be for a mother and unborn child. The only time we see Alexia resting is when she twists her ankle chasing a burglary and even then she's out of bed too soon! For me it just felt like it was pushing the reality lines too much.
I still enjoyed how fast pace this one was though and it was good that the story was centered on mother's and children, since Madame Lefoux has to save her kidnapped son from the vampire queen and of course the only way she feels she can do that is to build a mechanical octomaton to battle the vampires who stole him. Of course, she does get her son back in away as she now has to go and live with the vampires in order to do so.
And Alexia has her baby, though it does arrive early! She has a daughter, who does as Alexia has researched turn out to be a skin stealer, which means the baby can take a supernatural's power. So, she becomes a baby vampire at the end of the book. I think that's so cute and I can just imagine some of the trouble she might course in the next book now.
The development of the characters is still good, though it feels to have slowed down for me. I like how the second characters are used well to support Alexia and I don't feel they are just in the background. They all have their own parts to play in the story and the whole group of characters works well together. It's nice they come together to solve all the issues too and at the end of the book everything is tied up.
I think I would have liked to see more steampunk elements coming in, but that really is a secondary genre as the main one is really supernatural romance. And this book actually focus a bit more on married and family life, which is slightly different from the other three books in that everything is being set up for the baby coming, but also that Alexia has to revised Lord Maccon's past to find out what really happened for him to become the leader of the werewolf pack. The knowledge she finds out is does keep a secret, but I get a feeling that isn't going to last long.
I was a bit sad at the end when the werewolves had to move out of their home though and into London center, due to Alexia's too fast thinking, but this does show the progress on the characters and I get all the werewolves need to be in one place and not split between two as they end up becoming. Also, this could be a plot element in the next book.
Overall, I did enjoy this book and it ended on a high with a supernatural baby being born. The plot and characters were as good as the other books too. I'm looking forward finishing the fifth and final book off now, but also a little sad too because I've grown attached to the characters. Hopefully, it'll have a good ending. Till Next Monday.
Image from: https://www.amazon.co.uk
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