#CBR8 Book 116: "The Rest Falls Away" by Colleen Gleason

Page count: 347 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

It's been two months since I read this (why, yes, I am terribly behind on my reviews), so I'm resorting to Goodreads for the summary:

Beneath the glitter of nineteenth century London society lurks a bloodthirsty evil...

Vampires have always lived among them, quietly attacking unsuspecting debutantes and dandified lords as well as hackney drivers and Bond Street milliners. If not for the vampire slayers of the Gardella family, these immortal creatures would long ago have taken control of the world. 

In every generation, a Gardella is called to accept the family legacy, and this time, Victoria Gardella Grantworth is chosen, on the eve of her debut, to carry the stake. But as she moves between the crush of ballrooms and dangerous moonlit streets, Victoria's heart is torn between London's most eligible bachelor, the Marquess of Rockley, and her dark, dangerous duty.

And when she comes face to face with the most powerful vampire in history, Victoria must ultimately make a choice between duty and love. 

Earlier this year, I read The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman, which was being pitched a bit as Buffy in the Regency era (A teenage girl is the Chosen One and has to battle creatures of evil). The Gardella Vampire Chronicles, of which The Rest Falls Away is the first in a series of five books, was published back in 2007 (I read them in 2008-2009) and it also takes a young woman and pits her in the battle against vampires. Miss Victoria Gardella Grantworth has had her debut delayed due to a prolonged period of mourning and at the very same time as her mother and her two best friends, all highly placed in society, get ready to launch Victoria and find her a rich and influential husband, Victoria is told by her great-aunt Eustacia about the family legacy and has to make a choice about whether she wants to take up a clandestine career as a monster hunter. Because the Gardellas in the two generations separating Victoria and Eustacia chose not to accept their family duty (and was thus glamoured to forget there was ever such a choice), the powers have been building and Victoria will be unusually powerful for a Gardella.

She chooses to accept the family legacy, and is surprised to realise that her ladies' maid not only knows about vampires, but has all sorts of innovative ideas for how to conceal stakes and holy water receptacles about her person. She starts training martial arts with her great-aunt's manservant and tries in vain to convince fellow vampire slayer, the Italian Maximillian Pesaro that she really is very committed to slaying vampires, but she can manage it and enjoying herself at balls in the evenings, nonetheless. Their mutual animosity is not helped by the fact that Victoria mistakes him for a vampire and nearly stakes him the first time they meet. He's convinced she's a frivolous airhead who's taking their sacred duty lightly and grimly goes about trying to outdo her at every turn to prove his theories, to Eustacia's annoyance. She needs them working together, not sniping at each other.

While vampires have always existed in the world, the vampires of London are getting a lot more aggressive, due to the fact that the vampire queen, the ancient Lilith, is about to arrive, seeking an ancient book that can grant her unbelievable powers. Eustacia is too old to go out hunting anymore and needs Max and Victoria to do what they can to prevent Lilith's minions from getting the book. Meanwhile, Victoria is still going to society events, and has caught the eye of the Marquess of Rockley. Victoria's mother and her other two sponsors are beyond delighted, and do what they can to throw them together at every possible ball or gathering. Rockley is puzzled why Victoria keeps disappearing with flimsy pretexts, but seems determined to make her his bride. Can Victoria really combine married life and vampire slaying, though? How would Rockley react if she told him the truth about her family legacy?

As I remembered, the first book does a decent job of setting up the world-building and introducing most of the major players in the series, but it's not as exciting or engaging as the later books in the series, when the overarching plot really gets going. While I found Goodman's book a bit too long and meticulously researched to the point of slowing down the story for all the historical detail that was thrown in, this book is maybe a bit too short on detail and very action-orientated. Some of the characters seem almost like caricatures (they get more fleshed out as the series goes on), but I still enjoyed my re-read of the book.

Judging a book by its cover: Not a huge fan of the cover, mainly because I'm pretty sure no one would choose to wear a corset like that without some sort of undergarment, like a chemise, between the skin and the coarser fabric of the stays. I'm also pretty sure that's not an accurate corset for the time, when they wore mostly empire-waisted dresses and really didn't need the tiny, tiny waists. The red colour choice is quite dramatic, though (each book in the series has a different cover colour) and I guess it catches your eye. The book was given a cover design when the books were launched as e-books. On that, the cover model is holding a stake in one hand and a great big sword in the other, plus her clothing choices are even more anachronistic. So I guess if I have to choose one over the other, I'll pick this one.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 8: "The Clockwork Scarab" by Colleen Gleason

Page count: 356 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Miss Alvermina Holmes, daughter of Sir Mycroft and niece to the famous Sherlock, is summoned to the British Museum in the dark of night. Bored with her scientific experiments, and trying to get something to take her mind off the fact that her mother abandoned her and her father over a year ago, Mina decides to accept the invite.

When she arrives, she finds that another young woman has received the same summons. Miss Evaline Stoker, the younger sister of author and theatre manager Bram, has vampire hunting in her blood, and several illustrious ancestors who hunted the supernatural scourge during the Regency era. Unfortunately for Evaline, there are very few vampires left in England, and despite all her enhanced strength and speed and the training she does, she's never actually come across one yet. She's also deeply uncomfortable at the sight of blood, another drawback for any slayer of the undead.

The two young ladies discover that their summoner is none other than Irene Adler, now employed as a curator at the Museum, when she's not trying to help the royal family sort out tricky situations. A couple young women have been found dead, apparent suicides, but Miss Adler suspects foul play. A clockwork scarab was found in the possession of both the women. A third young woman has disappeared, and Miss Adler has been tasked by Princess Alexandra to do everything in her power to ensure that the girl is found alive. Adler wants to recruit Mina and Evaline as her agents.

The two girls try to work together, although neither feel very amiable towards the other, and do their best to use their abilities to solve the mysteries. There are hints of romantic entanglements for the women, involving a mysterious underworld figure and a police inspector, not to mention the strange young man the three ladies find crouched over a dead body in the Museum.

Gleason has set her new young adult series in a Steampunk version of Victorian London. Electricity has been outlawed as far too dangerous for people to use, and all manner of handy mechanical devices, all steam-driven, are mentioned, adding depth and verisimilitude to the world building. The chapters are told either from Miss Holmes or Miss Stoker's points of view, and it allows us to get to know the two young ladies, and see their varying reactions to their mission.

Mina hates her full name, and who wouldn't? Alvermina is a dreadful name. She's practically orphaned, with her mother having absconded to parts unknown, and her father spending most of his time in his club. She shares similar traits to her brilliant male relatives, being socially awkward, yet extremely observant, with excellent deductive abilities. Over the course of the investigation, she starts to fear that her uncle Sherlock is right, and that she is too easily muddled by emotions and female intuition to be a truly great investigator. She's rational, practical, loves to plan ahead and is frequently clumsy, especially when attired in long skirts and cumbersome bustles.

Evaline despairs that she shares the family calling of her Gardella ancestors, yet is unable to actually hunt and slay the undead. She wanders the streets at night trying to fight evildoers, without too much success. She therefore jumps at the chance to assist Miss Adler in solving the mystery of the dead and missing girls. She lives with her older brother Bram and his wife, the two having more or less raised her. Very few people know of her secret calling, and while she enjoys her sister-in-law's matchmaking schemes, she's not really eager to get married, suspecting that a husband would be loathe to accept her unusual nocturnal activities. She's strong, fast, and physically agile. Frequently acting before she thinks things through, she frustrates Mina with her impetuousness. She's a lot more socially adept, and also physically more attractive than Miss Holmes, another bone of contention between the two.

Neither girl start out particularly fond of the other, but as they are forced to work together, and their case starts getting more and more dangerous, they start finding common ground and a reluctant friendship.

This is the second steampunk fantasy, featuring a female relative of Sherlock Holmes I've read in the past few months. Of the two, I think this one was by far the more enjoyable. The protagonists are both fun, and engaging, with flaws enough that I'm looking forward to seeing how they will develop and grow in future books. The setup is interesting, and most of the world building is cleverly done. I was a little bit apprehensive with all the gadgets being mentioned in the early chapters, but as the story progressed, it became a lot less bothersome. I especially loved the steam-cycle. I want me one of those! Inspector Ambrose was also pretty cool, and if he doesn't actually eventually end up with Mina, I will be very upset.

Things I didn't like as much - the reveal of who Dylan is and where he came from. I'm not entirely sure what he adds to the story at all, or why these elements are necessary for the plot. If he were to die mysteriously and never be mentioned again between this book and the next, I won't mind in the slightest. I hated Nix' accent, and don't understand why it needed to be quite so exaggerated. It's suggested more than once that the accent is an affectation anyway, so why in the world couldn't he just drop it, rather than becoming more incomprehensible the further the plot developed? Thirdly, I'm not entirely sure the book needed quite so many love interests. I get that our protagonists are two young women, and that it adds excitement when they each have a young man to pine over, but they really do seem to fall for these men very quickly. The ending was also a bit hurried, and not entirely as satisfactory as I would have liked.

None of these niggles are enough to not make me very eager indeed to read the sequel. I'm a huge fan of Gleason's Gardella Vampire Chronicles and if this series ends up being half as enjoyable, I'll be well pleased.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR3 Book 43: "The Vampire Dimitri" by Colleen Gleason

Publisher: Mira
Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: May 20th, 2011
Date finished: May 21st, 2011

Dimitri, the Earl of Corvindale became one of the Dracule to save the woman he loved at the time, and has regretted his decision for nearly a century. Unlike many of his fellow Dracule, he doesn't really enjoy a life of decadence and debauchery, he isolates himself, studying ancient texts to try to find a way out of his demonic bargain. He's not at all pleased when his associate, the vampire hunter Chas Woodmore goes missing, taking the evil Cesare Moldavi's gorgeous vampire sister Narcise with him into hiding. Bound by a promise to Woodmore, Dimitri has to act as guardian to his two younger sisters, Maia and Angelica, and protect them against the vengeful wrath of Moldavi.

Maia Woodmore is not pleased about the arrangement either. She is to be married to a promising young gentleman as soon as he returns from the Continent, and feels that packing up all their possessions to stay at Corvindale's dark and dusty old manor is entirely pointless. Yet she will respect her brother's wishes. Then her sister Angelica gets herself involved with the disreputable Viscount Dewhurst, and despite Maia's many useful suggestions, Corvindale just doesn't seem interested in listening to her. She keeps having disturbingly erotic dreams about a man biting her neck, and there seems to be no end of dangerous thugs lurking around the place trying to get to her and her sister.

The Vampire Dimitri did not take as long to get properly started as The Vampire Voss, but did repeat a number of scenes that had already been explored in the previous book from a different point of view, in some cases in a little bit more detail than entirely neccessary, in my opinion. The fact that both Dimitri and Maia are more engaging characters, and that quite a lot of the worldbuilding has now been established, so there's less need for expositiony passages that explain about the Dracule or the relationships between various factions, also helps a lot. I did find Maia's character a little bit inconsistent, she's prim, proper and very decorous one minute, then give her a glass or two of champagne punch and she'll snog any random handsome stranger who approaches. I get that she's supposed to have hidden depths of passion that just need to be unlocked, but there could have been a bit more persuading going on before she threw caution to the wind.

I've heard that the third and final book in the trilogy is supposed to be less of a retread of already established plot, and am hoping that Gleason exploring a female Dracule might lead to the best book of the lot. This book was fun, but The Regency Draculia is nothing close to as good as her first series.

CBR3 Book 42: "The Vampire Voss" by Colleen Gleason

Publisher: Mira
Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 2.5 stars
Date begun: May 8th, 2011
Date finished: May 14th, 2011

Voss, Viscount Dewhurst is one of the Dracule, a vampire who became such after selling his soul to Lucifer in return for an eternal life of wealth, decadence and pleasure. He makes his living selling information, and as such, is not super popular among the other Dracule of the London set. He's recently returned from the Colonies, and is trying to find useful information about Napoleon Boneparte and the war between France and England. He knows that one of the Woodmore sisters (wards to another Dracule, Dimitri, the Earl of Corvindale) has psychic powers, and his plan is to seduce useful information out of her.

His job is hampered by the fact that the Woodmore sisters are being hunted by Cesare Moldavi, an evil vampire who's furious that Chas Woodmore, their brother (and a famous vampire hunter) has absconded with his precious sister Narcise. So Dimitri is keeping careful watch over the Woodmore sisters, and once Voss finally gets close to Angelica (the one with the Sight), it turns out that she is immune to his vampire thrall, if not to his looks and charm. A notorious womanizer, Voss is taken aback when he finds Angelica so irresistable, and for the first time in over a century of debauchery, he feels compelled to change. Will the love of a good woman save him from his bargain with the Devil?

I very much enjoyed Colleen Gleason's previous paranormal series, The Gardella Vampire Chronicles, which combined adventure, romance and vampire slaying in a Regency setting. In those books, all the vampires were evil, in this new series (which seems to be set in the same universe, due to cameo appearances by familiar characters), it seems that there are different kinds of vampires, and some are less bad than others. The Dracule are men (or women) who bargain their soul to the devil, and in return get eternal youth. They do have to drink blood and avoid sunlight, and apparently all have a unique weakness that can incapacitate them (the first thing they lay eyes on after becoming Dracule).

The vampire mythos is quite interesting, and the book was not bad after the first hundred pages or so. But to begin with, it was dreadfully slow going, and the reason it took me over a week to finish it, is that I kept putting it down to read something else. Once the action actually gets going, the book is quite enjoyable, although neither Voss nor Angelica are great characters, and I found myself a little bit indifferent to whether they would get their happy ending or not. Still, I feel that I may as well commit to the rest of the series now too, in the hopes that the following books in the trilogy get better.