CW's The Vampire Diaries

THIS ENTIRE POST IS A GIGANTIC SPOILER FOR SEASON ONE OF THE VAMPIRE DIARIES!

Ahem. Now that that’s out of the way…

For those of you who are just tuning in, you should be watching this show. For those of you who are on pins and needles just waiting for Thursday, let’s catch up, shall we?

Welcome to Mystic Falls

Mystic Falls, VA

This quaint little town in Virginia has a history with vampires, two in particular, and it is when the infamous Salvatore brothers (who were present at the town’s establishment back in the day) return to their ancestral home that the series begins – and wastes no time laying down where the drama will be as the season unfolds.

Elena Gilbert

Meet Elena Gilbert, played by Nina Dobrev. Her parents were killed in a car accident last spring, and now it’s time to start another year of school. Her brother Jeremy is distant and broody (in the way that teenage boys are, but bonus, the poor kid lost his parents too), and her aunt Jenna (her mother’s younger sister who is juggling college too) is trying her best to raise two teenagers after her sister’s sudden death. Elena has taken it upon herself to steer young Jeremy in the right direction, but she’s about to get her train derailed. Again.

Stefan Salvatore

Meet Stefan Salvatore, played by Paul Wesley. He’s the nice Salvatore brother. He’s the new kid in school (yep, these vamps are daywalkers – they have nice fat rings with the family crest on them to thank for that), quiet and serious. But when he spies Elena, he seems to be…disturbed. Well, that’s because his long lost love, Katherine, and this girl Elena bear a STRIKING resemblance. His interest is piqued and its just about this time that his brother Damon shows up. Stefan is the vampire who abstains – he drinks only animal blood, not the humans. This makes him weaker than his brother, and is a constant source of dissent between the two.

Damon Salvatore

I’ll tell you right now, I’m trying not to let it affect my quick-and-dirty catch-up (well, too much, anyway), but I love Damon Salvatore, played by Ian Somerhalder. Damon is my favorite Salvatore brother. He’s the dark and snarky one, with all the best lines. And Damon…Damon too once loved the mysterious Katherine, and it seems that she is the one who drove them apart. Whatever he may have been like before, now Damon takes what he wants and makes no apologies. But he too is intrigued by our lovely Elena.

Damon & Stefan, 1860s

Now, the important things are as follows: Katherine Pierce turned the brothers in 1864 , at the climax of the Civil War. They were both (we are led to believe) under the impression that they were Katherine’s only love, and while it appears Damon found out about her infidelity, he was too in love with her to care. We get lots of flashbacks to those bygone days, and Nina Dobrev really shows us her acting chops as she proves that while Katherine and Elena may be dopplegangers , they are not the same girl. In 1864, Katherine and several other vampires in Mystic Falls were rounded up and tossed into a church and burned alive – an event written down in the history books as a heinous crime against civilians by invading Yankee soldiers. Both brothers, escaped, and believed that Katherine was killed in that fire, but one of the major plot arcs of the season involves the discovery that none of them died, that they were trapped underneath the church and may yet live.

Damon’s discovery that Katherine is not amongst the desiccated bodies (which become less desiccated and begin terrorizing Mystic Falls) below what remains of the old Fell’s Church is one of the pivotal moments for his character. Though it is Stefan that keeps the photo of Katherine hidden in his personal belongings – one of the issues that crops up to eat away at the love Elena proclaims she feels for Stefan – it is Damon who is most affected by the thought that she escaped…and did not come for him. Stefan appears to only want her dead, and insists to his brother that she was evil, and that his feelings for her are totally misplaced, that they were being controlled. Turns out that Damon knew that Katherine was using her vampy powers to ensnare Stefan into complicity with her Evil Deeds, but that she didn’t have to use those powers on Damon – Damon loved her so much that he went along with whatever she asked. Damon intended to find her alive under the church, and the fact that she apparently escaped and has not contacted Damon for over a century has him feeling more than a little betrayed.

Katherine & Stefan, 1860s

Annnnd this is about the time he considers (and skirts around) turning a new leaf. He’s been playing nice with the local sheriff and several members of the Founding Families of Mystic Falls/Fell’s Church (the Gilberts, the Forbeses, the Lockwoods and the Fells are amongst the recognizable names), and discovering what they know about vampires to ensure his survival (they don’t know the Salvatore rings allow them to walk in the daylight) and discovers that there’s something fishy going on – and that this secret society knows vampires are back in Mystic Falls. He joins up with history teacher Alaric Saltzman, and together they discover a shared past – turns out Alaric was married to Elena’s birthmother (yep! Elena’s adopted! It was that much of a shock to the watchers, so I thought I might throw you a curveball in case you’re new so you got to have that ‘whoa, what?’ feeling the rest of us did), and Damon was the one who turned said birthmother into a vampire (is there ANYONE without a vampy past in this show? Um…not yet.) – and become a team of vampire-slaying heroes, rounding up the risen “tomb vamps” from old Fell’s Church and ensuring the safety of Mystic Falls. One might even consider it a “bromance”. They snark, they hate each other’s guts, but at the end of the day, after a punch in the face, they’re solid.

Well. Just as Damon is deciding whether or not he wants to give up being the Big Bad, Stefan finds himself struggling with his nature. He has been tempted by the dark side, pulled into memories by the power he once commanded as a killer. In his efforts to protect himself, his brother, and Elena, his lady love, Stefan is faced with the true nature that runs just under the surface – that he is a killer and that no amount of ignoring that fact will ever make it go away.

So. Stefan connects with his vampire nature, and Damon connects with his human one…and with Stefan’s girlfriend. At best, Damon and Elena have enjoyed a snarky back-and-forth volley all season, and she vacillates between being unsure of his motives, being outright frightened of him (complete with bravado that he finds amusing and appealing), and defending his brief flashes of humanity to his brother – his brother who believes he is beyond redemption. The relationship between the brothers is deliciously complicated, but I’m supposed to be skimming the important parts here, not waxing poetic on sibling relationships.

One might say it all comes to a head when Stefan gives in to his vampirism and kidnaps a young girl, feeding on her and leaving Elena in the surprisingly capable hands of his brother. The infamous dance scene in episode 1×19, “Miss Mystic Falls”, was fraught with tension, and gave us all either something to hope for or something to fear as it begins to become crystal clear that Damon’s flirtations are more than just passing amusements.

Things start to snowball after that – Stefan confronts his nature and attempts to die for his sins, Elena meets her birthmother face to face (and is not impressed), the remaining tomb vamps plan a siege of Mystic Falls on Founder’s Day (the town’s historic celebration), and the secret society that killed the vampires of Fell’s Church over a century ago are planning to take out what’s left of them in modern Mystic Falls.

And then we come to the finale…where we finally meet the infamous Katherine Piece in modern day. She slips into Elena’s clothes, kills Elena’s uncle (her adopted father’s brother…who turns out to be her real father…what is this, Empire Strikes Back?) and…is the unexpected recipient of Damon’s confession of his confused feelings for Elena.

Now, while the Stefan/Elena/Damon/Katherine shenanigans weren’t the ONLY thing going on this season, this post would be far too long if I addressed them all. SO. Here are some other people you should know:

Bonnie Bennett

Bonnie Bennett, witchy best friend of Elena Gilbert. Her grandmother is a known drunk and occult professor who is Bonnie’s shepherd as she discovers her emerging witchy powers. Turns out it was Bonnie’s ancestor, Emily, Katherine Pierce’s handmaiden, who used her magic to construct the infamous daywalker rings for the Salvatore brothers and Katherine’s own daywalker pendant. Damon made a promise to Emily to protect her line in exchange for trying to save Katherine. Bonnie is suspicious of both brothers, but more antagonistic towards Damon, who loses no sleep over trying to murder Bonnie to get back at Emily for her long-ago betrayal.

Caroline Forbes

Caroline Forbes, daughter of Sheriff Forbes, is the third arm of the Elena-Bonnie-Caroline triptych. She seems to be an air-headed drama queen, but makes many attempts to be taken seriously. She is hypnotized and used by Damon early in the season to get close to Elena and the sheriff, and while she doesn’t remember details of the weeks she was under Damon’s thrall, she does remember that she doesn’t like him much. She ends the season in a coma after a horrific car accident also involving Tyler Lockwood and Matt Donovan. (I won’t lie, she’s a personal favorite – she may never be able to say the right things, and okay, sometimes her heart *isn’t* in the right place, but she’s a fantastic character with a lot of room for development and her fair share of personal issues to work through.)

Tyler Lockwood

Tyler Lockwood is the son of the mayor and a kid with anger issues. He might be a werewolf. I’m just sayin’ there were some hits. Including, after a particular angry outburst with Jeremy Gilbert, a rather conspicuous camera focus on a full moon. Obviously this town has more to worry about than just vampires.

Matt Donovan

Matt Donovan, Elena’s ex-boyfriend, Caroline’s current boyfriend, and good ol’ all-American boy. Like Jenna Sommers, he is an oblivious follower to all this supernatural drama, but as his girlfriend used to date a vampire and his best friend might be a werewolf, clearly he won’t be able to stay in the dark for long.

Jeremy Gilbert

Jeremy Gilbert, brother to Elena and the *actual* child of Grayson Gilbert and Melissa Sommers-Gilbert. His storylines involved Matt’s sister (a depressed drug-addict who met an untimely new-vampire death at the end of a stake after attacking Elena), and the secretive yet endearing Ana, daughter of Pearl, one of Katherine Pierce’s friends back in 1864. With Ana’s death in the finale, Jeremy downs several bottles of pills and a vial of vampire blood and curls up in a little ball, clearly desirous of The End, even as his uncle is being murdered downstairs.

Jenna Sommers

Jenna Sommers, erstwhile caretaker of the Gilbert teens, is head over heels for Alaric Saltzman, and has no idea about Alaric’s vigilantism or the fact that his dead wife is a vampire who was also Elena’s birthmother. She’s a smart cookie though, so I doubt these things will stay secret for long. Plus, she caught Damon and Katherine smooching on the porch, and was the one who technically invited Katherine in, clearly thinking she was Elena and allowing Katherine to end the season with such panache. Don’t quite know whether or not that will come up, but she has a low opinion of cheaters, so I’d bet Elena is in for a tongue-lashing when Jenna confronts her about “her” make-out sesh with the wrong Salvatore brother on their front porch. If Elena didn’t already find out about that little detail, I imagine she’ll catch up quick after that.

Alaric Saltzman

Alaric Saltzman fooled us for a bit there – he too wears one of those college fraternity-sized rings that protect vampires from daylight, and we wondered if he might’ve been one of them. Turns out, while it keeps vamps from frying in the sun, it also keeps humans from…dying of mortal wounds. (I’m trying not to make a comment about how this makes him and Damon superheroes, and believe me, <em>it’s not easy</em>.) Alaric discovered this after being inflicted with one such wound, and decided that for all the nasty feelings he was feeling for his wife after discovering she had gone and sought out Damon to go vamp, that her desire to protect him did actually come in handy. We’re hoping his affection for Jenna isn’t just a ploy for information – they’re cute together.

Isobel Saltzman

Isobel Saltzman, Elena’s birthmother, is full of sass and revelations (including outing Damon’s love for Elena…in front of Elena…to Damon’s surprise…and Stefan’s too), and apparently she knows Katherine Pierce quite well. She is the one who tells Damon that Katherine has known he was alive and where he was ever since she escaped…and hasn’t wanted to come find him. She seems every bit the cold-blooded killer vamp that Stefan is afraid he will become and that Damon has proven himself capable of, but then she does something sweet, like hypnotizing Alaric and making him think that they parted ways on purpose so he doesn’t keep pining after her…because she thinks he deserves better.

So where does that leave us? Well, that leaves us with this fantastic teaser for season 2.

Other clips to check out just in case you’re not convinced (or need a characterization refresher):

• Damon & Stefan try out each other’s good guy/bad guy roles
• Damon’s confession to not!Elena in the finale
• Damon & a drugged out Vicki Donovan trash Stefan’s room for kicks…and dance in ep6 “Lost Girls”
• Early flashback clip of Damon, Stefan, & Katherine…before Elena realizes how similar they look
• Damon exposes his trust issues & hints at why he antagonizes Stefan

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1. StrangenessAbound’s 見 & 漫 Page: Reviewing Dance in the Vampire Bund (anime and manga)

What’s this? Something not about Supernatural? I’ll give you all a moment to get over the shock.

Good? Okay. You may have heard about Adam Lambert in the past year or so, he was the runner up on season eight of American Idol (which, to be honest, I didn’t watch because I can’t stand the show) or you’ve heard a few of his singles on the radio (“For Your Entertainment”, “Whataya Want From Me” and the newest, “If I Had You”). You might also know Adam from the big to do that was made when he kissed his keyboardist/bassist and got into a little dirty dancing with his dancers at the AMAs. I have no shame in admitting that’s what made me really pay attention to him and I’m glad that I did, because he is an incredibly talented singer and not too bad to look at either. I’ve gotten very into the fandom (or bandom, if you prefer) and follow every concert on LiveJournal, as well as following Adam and his bandmates and dancers on Twitter. Back in June, my best friend (Sulwen) who introduced me to Adam’s music (as well as Supernatural) and I went to his concert in Toledo. It was a fun experience, albeit very hard to see and also incredibly hot. I’m very short, so general admission crowds aren’t my friends. Not too long after that, Sulwen text messaged me around 3AM with “Hey, do you want to see Adam in Covington?”. Naturally, I sent back “YES!” as soon as I read her message. Here is my experience from that concert which happened on August 30th in Covington, Kentucky.

Sulwen and I decided that for this concert, we were going to get to the venue as early as we could so we could get up close to the stage. We arrived at the Madison around 9 in the morning and were 41st and 42nd in line. Talking to other Glamberts, we found out that a couple people had gotten to the venue at noon the previous day just so they could get up front and camped out overnight. That is some impressive dedication! Most people brought folding chairs, food, music and other things to pass the time. I brought some rainbow cupcakes with edible glitter frosting for anyone who wanted them. Almost everyone had a sign with them or were making signs because we had gotten wind of a possible protest that day. The Westboro Baptist Church had planned a protest at Adam’s concert in Springfield, MO but never showed. A group of fans who weren’t going to the concert showed up to counter-protest the WBC and their rampant stupidity. We were all ready and waiting for some of these homophobes to show up. Here you can see my (blue) and Sulwen’s (purple) double-sided signs, as well as one of my cupcakes:

Some of the fans busted out the sidewalk chalk and glitter to glam up the sidewalks of Covington as well.

We were on a busy street in Covington, so a lot of people slowed down to gawk at this huge line of mostly women that stretched from the Madison down the street and around the corner (the venue was sold out and holds about 1200 people). A few actually stopped to ask why we were all sitting out there and a few others gave us disapproving looks. The protestors, much like their WBC counterparts, never showed! It was incredible to see how many people had brought signs just at the rumor of a protest. My favorite that I remember seeing said “God loves glitter”. Fandom is awesome like that sometimes.

The line started moving a little closer around 5 that afternoon, everyone who brought chairs or coolers took them back to their cars and we all were eagerly counting down the hours until they opened the doors. Once we got in the doors, we hurried inside to the theatre so we could get up as close to the stage as possible. Sulwen and I were only three people from the stage – mission accomplished! It took a while for everyone to get inside and then there was a bit of a delay for Adam’s opening act, fellow American Idol contestant, Allison Iraheta. Allison had definitely improved since we saw her in Toledo, her voice sounded great and she really got into her songs. I’m always surprised that she’s only 18 years old because her voice sounds much more mature than that. There was a problem with her earpiece that we noticed, though the sound was just fine for the audience. She performed songs from her self-titled, debut album which included an acoustic version of one of my favorites, “No One Else” that made me choke up a bit and did a fantastic cover of Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker”. The girl is just an adorable little ball of energy and really fits in well with the rest of the Glam Nation Tour.

Another brief pause while we waited for Adam’s band set up. I was highly amused by the fact that they played Big & Rich’s “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” alongside Katy Perry’s “Peacock” and Shiny Toy Guns’ “Le Disko”. Actually, it sounded a lot like my own iPod had been plugged into their sound system. The concert opened with a remix version of Adam’s first single, “For Your Entertainment” and everyone (except for the husband in front of me who was obviously dragged there by his wife) sang along and danced. Adam came out in an outfit straight out of Velvet Goldmine and your eye was instantly drawn to him for the entire show. His opening medley consisted of “Voodoo”, “Down the Rabbit Hole” and “Ring of Fire” (which he had covered while on AI) and had some fantastic choreography. It felt very sexy and psychedelic, the three songs blended together flawlessly and were a fantastic starter for the fast-paced show. One of my favorite songs, “Fever” followed and there’s always a sexy bit of interaction between Adam and his bassist, Tommy Joe Ratliff (the one who he kissed at the AMAs) that ranges from full-on making out to a quick little lick to some playful touching and it’s always fun to see. We were treated to a little playful hip check before Adam joined his dancers down stage. From what I could tell, Adam was having sound problems with his earpiece like Allison had and this resulted in no kissing or licking during the song.

The dancers had a small interlude where they take over the stage while Adam did a quick costume change (a gorgeous long, black coat) for the next song, another favorite, “Sleepwalker”. The song is powerful and full of all that unrequited emotion after a breakup. It seems to be a favorite of Tommy’s as well because he almost always sings along and did so at this venue. Things slowed down a bit for the next couple of songs, acoustic versions of “Whataya Want From Me” and the uplifting “Aftermath”, with the emotional ballad, “Soaked” in between them. During these three songs, I could really see how much Adam appreciated the audience. He was visibly touched by the outcries of love and applause. The audience is a big part of how the show goes and Adam really feeds off the crowd’s energy. I’ve noticed in previous concerts when the audience wasn’t as into it as others were, there is a visible difference in Adam’s on stage behavior and the feel of the show. He wants you up and dancing and singing along. Our audience was definitely into it and having a good time. Though, I’m pretty sure that Sulwen and I were screaming our heads off enough to make up for at least ten other concert goers. More than a few times, I had some definite eye contact with Adam and that was pretty intense, let me tell you. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a concert were the performer did that and I really enjoyed it.

Things picked back up with “Sure Fire Winners” and “Strut” and continued through to “Music Again”. Adam took time out to introduce his fantastic band – Monte Pittman (guitar), Tommy (bass), Camila Grey (keyboard; also a member of Uh Huh Her with The L Word’s Leisha Hailey) and Logineu Parsons (drums), each one giving us a little taste of what they can do. Next were the dancer introductions – Sasha Mallory, Terrance D. Spencer, Taylor Green and Brooke Wendel (the tour’s choreographer), who showed off their stuff for everyone. Adam closed the show with his current single, “If I Had You” and made sure everyone was dancing along in the audience. However, that wasn’t quite the end! Adam returned to the stage for an encore – his cover of T. Rex’s “20th Century Boy”. There was an amusing little fight between Adam and Monte during the song and they kind’ve chased each other around the stage. Someone had also tossed a girl’s thong onto the stage, which Adam twirled around his finger before flinging it back into the audience, because – really? A girl’s thong? Regardless, this song is my favorite encore choice on the tour. Previously, Adam had been closing with either Gary Jules’ “Mad World” or Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” (both he performed on AI) or both. While I like both of those songs, “20th Century Boy” is just so much more fun and fits in better with the whole glam rock theme of the show.

I had such an amazing time and loved that I could spend my last day with my best friend like that, even if I got a parking ticket, sore feet and about two hours of sleep. If any of you get the chance to go to one of Adam’s concerts, I highly recommend it. He is so talented and you get totally carried away by the energy of the show. Check out the other concert vids on YouTube if you can’t go to an actual concert.

You can check out Adam Lambert – For Your Entertainment and Allison Iraheta – Just Like You on Amazon.

Concert picture credit: @MontegoBay61205, @SQUIRRELKE and @sassyretrochick. Vids: Glambert16 and 1877riley.

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It’s one of the most shown movies on cable TV in the last 25 years or so and it’s about a man in a loincloth and boots with a murse and a tiara who speaks to animals. Oh yeah, you know it, you love it (but maybe won’t admit it)…it’s The Beastmaster!

The Beastmaster is the story of Dar (Marc Singer) prophesied before birth to grow up and kill the evil priest-lord Maax (Rip Torn). And if that weren’t enough, he’s also the king’s son and therefore destined to be king, too. Maax, trying to defy the prophecy, sends his witches (obviously Leatherface’s sisters, but with hot bodies) to rip the babe from his mother’s womb and sacrifice him. Through magic, the baby is removed from his mother and teleported (O_o) into a cow which is then led away to be slaughtered to retrieve Baby Dar. Just before the baby is to be sacrificed, he is branded with the symbol of the god Ar on his left palm. But before the witch can strike the fatal blow, a farmer, wandering alone in the woods after dark, hears the baby crying and kills the witch, who dies Jedi-style. He then takes the baby back to his village to raise as his own son.

Cut to 20 or so years later. Dar has grown into a well-muscled, half-naked man who still lives with his dad and farms in the fields which, rather handily for a plot point coming up in about 5 minutes’ time, are about 3 hills away from the village. From that vantage point, he and the other young men of the village see a badly-rendered cloud of dust, which signifies that the Jun hordes are bearing down on the settlement. They arrive just in time to get slaughtered to a man. Luckily, Dar is dragged to safety by his dog Kodo, who is himself mortally wounded and dies after getting Dar far enough away to remain unseen. Dar comes to, sees his dead dog, carries him back to the village, gathers up the bodies (he’s the sole survivor), sets them on fire and leaves the village.

Except for the bit with the cow, sounds like it could be the start of an awesome sword and sorcery epic, right? Sword and sorcery, yes. Epic? Not so much. But who cares? It is awesomesauce with added cheese!

There are a lot of things about The Beastmaster that should make me feel guilty for loving it. Dar, while ostensibly on a mission to avenge his village, takes the time to watch topless slave girls swimming in a pool, then uses his bond with animals to hit on Tanya Roberts. “Sorry Dad, revenge can wait. There are babes to be had!” And big, bad Dar also has a man-purse for carrying around his ferrets, Kodo and Podo (yes, he named one of the ferrets after his dead dog). And while the tiger, Ruh, and the ferrets can understand commands in English, the eagle can only understand bad raptor impressions?

So we have slave girls cavorting topless, but it’s really the men who are flashing the most skin. Even John Amos buffed up and stripped down to play Seth, the guardian of Tal, the young prince in exile. I’ve never really thought of him as hot, but he sure does look good in that bondage get-up of his! (Okay, I generally don’t feel embarrassed about my guilty pleasures, but now I feel kinda dirty. :P ) So, um…yeah. Another reason to feel guilty is the level of creatures in the film. I mentioned the witches with their melted-wax faces and model bodies, but there’s also the Death Guards, men encased in bondage gear (I can’t believe I’m mentioning bondage gear twice in this piece!) with spikes who have a “mysterious green liquid” and some sort of luminescent worm inserted into their ear which makes them into mad, raving things without fear or pity, shock troops for Maax’s evil army.

And then there’s those things that worship the eagle. I’ve seen them called Birdmen, but they look more like humanoid bats to me. And the less said about their eating habits, the better. Ew.

If I had to pick one thing in the whole movie that makes it an over the top guilty pleasure though, it wouldn’t be the pulling-women-with-animals schtick or the Death Guards or the Birdmen…things. It wouldn’t even be the ferret bag or John Amos in bondage gear (I did it again! That’s THREE!) No, it would be that, despite Dar and Seth and all the heroes in the film, who ultimately takes down Maax? It’s not the golden boy of prophesy, it’s a ferret. That’s right, Kodo the ferret is the one who finally managed to bring Maax’s evil to an end. A bite to the neck and Maax topples into the sacrificial fire. Mustelids FTW!

So if you haven’t seen The Beastmaster yet, where have you been for the last 28 years? If you have seen it, you owe it to yourself to see it again. If not for the manflesh or Tanya Roberts’ boobs, then do it for Kodo, the unsung hero.

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2. Guilty Pleasures: George of the Jungle (1997)
3. Guilty Pleasures: Dungeons & Dragons (TV Series)

Blameless by Gail Carriger

Buy It Now: on Amazon

Description: Quitting her husband’s house and moving back in with her horrible family, Lady Maccon becomes the scandal of the London season.

Queen Victoria dismisses her from the Shadow Council, and the only person who can explain anything, Lord Akeldama, unexpectedly leaves town. To top it all off, Alexia is attacked by homicidal mechanical ladybugs, indicating, as only ladybugs can, the fact that all of London’s vampires are now very much interested in seeing Alexia quite thoroughly dead.

While Lord Maccon elects to get progressively more inebriated and Professor Lyall desperately tries to hold the Woolsey werewolf pack together, Alexia flees England for Italy in search of the mysterious Templars. Only they know enough about the preternatural to explain her increasingly inconvenient condition, but they may be worse than the vampires — and they’re armed with pesto.

This review is based on a copy purchased by the reviewer.

TDF Pamela’s Review:

I’m beginning to wonder if Gail Carriger is capable of not hitting one out of the park. Soulless, the first book in the Parasol Protectorate series (reviewed by me here), was incredibly unique. Book 2, Changeless (reviewed by Stacy B here), improved on the unique setting of the first book, introducing more of the supernatural world and the fascinating steampunk technology.

Blameless picks up right where Changeless left off (which means if you haven’t read Changeless yet, beware spoilers in this review!), with a pregnant and shamed Alexia who has moved out of her husband’s house and back in with her lovely family. When she discovers that Britain’s vampires (with the exception of Lord Akeldama, who has gone missing) want her dead, she goes on the run with Madame Lefoux and faithful Floote, her late father’s valet.

I think I was most impressed by Alexia’s continued judicious use of spine. She’s found herself in quite a shameful position–pregnant and cast out by her husband, and in Victorian England’s snooty and prudish society, that’s probably the worst thing that could possibly happen to a woman. Alexia is more irritated by this than anything else, and despite the physical woes of early pregnancy, she still keeps her head high and kicks some ass when necessary. I absolutely love this character.

Carriger’s prose is, as usual, laugh-out-loud funny and elegant in its mimicry of Victorian fiction. Most of the story is a cross-continent chase during which Alexia tries to figure out both how she was able to get pregnant and what her child might be when it is born. The scenes in which Professor Lyall attempts to find out why the vampires are after Alexia are very welcome. I liked Lyall in the other books, but he gets his chance to shine in Blameless, and he proves himself to be an excellent beta to Lord Conall Maccon’s pack as well as a good leader in his own right.

My only complaint about Blameless (and admittedly, it is kind of a major one) needs to go under a spoiler cut, since it deals with something that happens at the end of the novel. Beware Blameless spoilers below!

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Other than that complaint, though, I enjoyed the heck out of Blameless and count myself as a devoted reader of the Parasol Protectorate.

Related posts:

1. Review: Changeless by Gail Carriger
2. Review: Soulless by Gail Carriger
3. Ongoing Review Part 2: TMBOVR

Part of me cheers Jeff Deck and Benjamin Henson for going on The Great Typo Hunt, chronicled in their new book of the same name. Who hasn’t seen one of those “12 Items or Less” signs at the grocery store and wanted to shout, “FEWER! IT SHOULD BE FEWER!” to everyone in line? (At which point, I imagine myself being dragged away by grocery store security to be put in some kind of padded white cell designed specifically for grammar sticklers.)

Image by Silas Grok at Flickr.

On the other hand, I’ve been known to make a typo or seven myself. I still remember writing a story in which one of the characters “waved her hand in the air” but I wrote “hair” instead of “air.” That H completely changed the meaning of the sentence. Had THAT appeared on any signage, it probably would’ve given Deck and Henson the vapors.

So let he who is without typos cast the first stone. (Or, as Deck and Henson point out, it’s best to ask first before correcting a sign’s grammar because you might get arrested.)

Context is key. Not everyone is going to be a professional writer, but pretty much everyone needs to learn how to write well enough to be understood. Much of our lives are conducted over email these days, so if you can’t form a complete sentence, you might have problems in the office. Yet the internet is notorious for promoting bad spelling and grammar. There’s acronyms, smiley faces, l33t speak, texting jargon and Twitter (which encourages you to spell things wrong so long as you can get under the 140 character limit).

The Great Typo Hunt is among a plethora of new books that have appeared in defiance of internet speak. I still remember how shocked everyone was when Lynn Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves became a best seller in 2004. (In the book’s defense, who doesn’t love a good Panda/Punctuation joke?) Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl podcasts are practically required listening. She also has several books. Roy Peter Clark’s new book promises to explain the Glamour of Grammar. The title makes me imagine the Oxford Comma walking the runway at some couture fashion show. How can I not be intrigued?

Some might find the sheer volume of grammar books to be frightening. Does one have to memorize all the rules in order to speak? What if I have the 15th Chicago Manual of Style and the 16th has just come out? The truth is, you only need to find one grammar guide–whichever one explains the rules so you can remember them. I personally gravitate toward Strunk & White’s Elements of Style, because it was required reading when I was in school, and the tiny size did not scare young Emily. But if you prefer your grammar to be glamorous, now there are other titles for you!

Emily

Emily is a book nerd currently living in New York City. She recently completed a master’s degree at New York University and doesn’t really know what to do with her free time. When she is not reading, working or sleeping, she is planning for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. She doesn’t really like writing bios, but if you would like to know more about her then you can contact her at bintwin @ yahoo.com.

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