Title: Timeless
Author: Gail Carriger
Series: Book Five
Format: Paperback

Up until this point most of the action has stuck around the England area… with a quick trip to Scotland. Now the action has gone even further… towards Egypt or more specifically: Alexandria the home of the oldest vampire hove in the world at that time. Its queen has requested the presence of Lady Maccon and her precious (and precocious) daughter Prudence… whom is now categorized as a “metanatural” essentially a being that within proximity of a supernatural would steal that particular supernatural’s powers turning them temporarily human and Prudence temporarily supernatural. This little conundrum provides some very comedic sequences throughout the novel as little Prudence isn’t entirely aware of her own abilities when she becomes supernatural.

In fact the book opens up with the Maccons getting ready for the theatre and little Prudence is going through “Bath Night” with the drones and Lord Akeldama and just that first sequence gives the reader a very good idea of how life is now that Prudence has come into the world… heaven forbid that Lord and Lady Maccon would produce a docile child.

Although a fair amount of the focus is on Lord and Lady Maccon and their trip to Alexandria there is indeed a secondary storyline that was building in the sidelines that I found myself skipping through Lord and Lady Maccon just to see how this secondary storyline would pan out.

To talk about any of the characters or even touch upon the storylines would be revealing far more than I am willing to reveal… this is probably one of the few novels I would say that if you have read the series you better read this novel. This is one of the few novels that doesn’t just tie everything up in a nice package by the end of it… but it also explodes it into a billion pieces and mocks the recipient in saying… you want more don’t you? Well you can’t!

Well… considering that Ms. Gail Carriger is already working on a series of novels focusing on Prudence when she is a bit grown… I say there is quite of bit of story left in this world. A lot of lives change in some of the most extreme of ways. A lot of the characters we have seen in the past we will see again in this novel in some capacity or another. We will also get a chance to understand what happens to supernaturals if and when they stay alive for too long… like several centuries.

Sure as I mentioned earlier, Prudence has a tendency to steal the show here and there… but really… what two / three year old doesn’t in real life? There are a few other characters that are also scene stealers and feelings that we didn’t know existed are also resolved in some capacity. We learn more about not only the primary characters but some of the secondary characters that you can’t help but want to know and learn more and not necessarily via the eyes of Lady Maccon.

All in all, this is a very good conclusion and one that after I focused on the “secondary storyline” I found myself reading and rereading and rereading in my time in the old country.

In the end of the day I am looking forward to seeing what Ms. Gail Carriger has on her plate. From her website it would appear that she is focusing on:

The Finishing School Series: is set in the same world as The Parasol Protectorate series, only 25 years earlier, and features a finishing academy located in a giant caterpillar-like dirigible floating over Dartmoor in which young ladies are taught to . . . finish . . . everything . . . and everyone . . . as needed. There will be steampunk etiquette! There will be well-dressed espionage! There will be Victorian fake food. There will be flying mechanical sausage dogs named Bumbersnoot. I am excited. The first book will come out Feb 5, 2013.

Parasol Protectorate Abroad: My intention with the Parasol Protectorate Abroad books is to explore the wider ramifications of my Steampunk British Empire, not just how technology has altered but how vampires and werewolves have evolved differently in other parts of the world. I’m not going to tell you too much, as Timeless will give you some set up for this series. But sufficient to say, that the Prudence currently in my head has much of her mother’s go-get-em attitude mixed with a bit of her father’s temper and a certain love of fashion the result of a particularly colorful upbringing. She and her crack dirigible team lark about performing Leverage-like infiltration and rescue missions at the behest of (but if asked they will deny everything) Queen Victorian and her shadow council. It is going to be so very fun!

Aside to what she has set up above… I can think of another series that I think people will be more than excited to see come to fruition… but I’ll keep my mouth shut on that one.

So who is excited for 2013?

For more of my thoughts in other books in this five-book series:
– Book 1: Soulless
– Book 2: Changeless
– Book 3: Blameless
– Book 4: Heartless
– Book 5: Timeless