Blameless is the third book of the Parasol Protectorate series, and it certainly lives up to the promise of the other two books in the series. Alexia, at first, moves home until she can decide what to do about her husband, Lord Maccon. Of course if you remember her family from previous books, this is not the ideal situation. But her bad luck continues as the news carries the story that she and Lord Maccon are feuding. Queen Victoria dismisses her from the Shadow Council and her family throws her out.

More Gail Carriger: Parasol Protectorate: * Soulless * Changeless * Blameless

Turning to Lord Akeldama, she learns that he’s left London and can’t be reached. With all friends out of reach and desperate, she turns to Madame Lefoux, Professor Lyall, her good friend Ivy, and Foote. Since Alexia had been attacked when leaving her family’s home, she needs answers and decides to go to Italy to find the Templars who are rumored to have collected research on the soulless which might explain what’s happening.

The fact that Italy has banned all vampires, werewolves, and other supernaturals from their country doesn’t seem to imply to our adventurers that this may not be the place they actually want to go. But go the must, if they want to find answers. Along the way they fight a running battle against vampire assassins who wish to kill Alexia.

Lord Maccon who has managed to find a way to remain inebriated even though he’s a werewolf, finally manages to clear his brain enough to think coherently for a few minutes and realizes what he’s done. Plans are made and Lord Maccon sets it in action.

The narrative switches between Alexia on her travels and what’s happening in London and surrounds. Eventually, the story lines converge, but along the way the reader gets a serious action adventure, a bit of humor, some interesting bits of historical information about this world, and some wonderful bits of character development. Carriger is not allowing her characters to stand still, they are changing in reaction to their circumstances and some of the realizations that are made are ones that will effect actions in the new books in this series.

If you’ve enjoyed the previous books in this series, you’re sure to love this one. It’s advisable that new readers begin with the first book, Soulless. However, you could just jump right in but to get the full-effect start at the beginning.