Ransom Stephens's Blog - Posts Tagged "soulless"
Ransom Reviews "Soulless" by Gail Carriger
In February 2019, I was on a science fiction and fantasy panel with Gail Carriger. She sat next to me and, let me tell you, she was awesome. Dressed in clothes that, at least to my inexperienced eye, could pass as Victorian, every insight she offered was a gem. In particular, how she described the way she tailored 19th century London to fit the paranormal population of her novels.
So I grabbed a copy of Soulless for a few reasons: it had the most reviews of any of her books, was the first in a series, and was cheapest (yes, you can see how I roll). I realized after I finished it that it is also her debut work, published about ten years ago; had I noticed this before reading it, I would have chosen another title because we become better writers with each book and I want to see the best!
In Carriger’s Victorian London, vampires and werewolves are accepted if not welcomed by society to the extent that they have representation in government, a shadow branch of parliament that only meets at night, of course.
What grabbed me about Carriger’s work while reading Soulless was her quirky use of language. Similar to what I try to do with Simon Wentworth in my Time Weavers books, e.g., Too Rich to Die*. Carriger’s Alexia Tarrabotti has a strong-willed, unforgiving relationship with the world. She interprets things in unique ways that draw us in and share her amusement. Even when the chips are down, the tension runs high, and the situation is hopeless, Carriger manages to maintain that tension without sacrificing Miss Tarabotti’s wit which is no small trick. Here are a couple of my faves:
As a lesson in craft, Soulless, provides a terrific example of PoV (point of view) technique. It’s written in the third person, usually in Miss Tarabotti’s PoV, but at times switches PoV from one paragraph to the next. I don’t read a lot of romance (and I suspect that Soulless is shelved in fantasy/paranormal/steampunk more often than in romance), but a romance writer (and damn, I can’t remember her name!) told me that rapid PoV switching is common in romance so that we can experience erotica on both or each or every side of the, as it were, ahem, equation.
The guiding rule (even in LitFic) is to restrict changes in PoV to chapter breaks or section breaks (i.e., when the author leaves an empty line or dingbats, like * * *, between paragraphs). I’ve broken that rule a few times in cases of intense action, like the scene in The Sensory Deception* when Farley has to choose between his best friend and the woman he loves, but am usually quite careful with it. The PoV switch rule helps keep readers’ minds uncluttered; few readers are conscious of the PoV, but if you bounce around without making it clear whose head you’re looking out of, they get a sense of dissonance and that’s when people set books down.
When she makes frequent, rapid PoV switches, Carriger sticks to the spirit of the rule by establishing the PoV immediately in every switch.
Gail Carriger also provides some nice examples of reasonable uses of adverbs. Use of adverbs and adjectives usually indicate that the author can’t think of a good verb and, instead, decorates verbs and nouns with these paltry modifiers. In this sentence:
Gail Carriger is obviously a genius.
Finally, as a physicist, I’m can’t help but notice mistakes when it comes to certain phenomena, for example, the timing relationship between lunar and solar activity. On the night of a full moon she writes,
But a full moon rises at the same time that the sun sets — it’s pretty much the defining quality of what it means for a moon to be full. I don’t blame Carriger, I blame the editors! (please, when you catch a mistake of any kind, always blame the editor.) Plus, ahem, there was this instance in The God Patent when I made a similar mistake, not with a full moon, of course, but with the relative timing of sunrise and the position of a waning gibbous overhead.
Fortunately I have plenty of watchful readers keen to point these things out!
So I grabbed a copy of Soulless for a few reasons: it had the most reviews of any of her books, was the first in a series, and was cheapest (yes, you can see how I roll). I realized after I finished it that it is also her debut work, published about ten years ago; had I noticed this before reading it, I would have chosen another title because we become better writers with each book and I want to see the best!
In Carriger’s Victorian London, vampires and werewolves are accepted if not welcomed by society to the extent that they have representation in government, a shadow branch of parliament that only meets at night, of course.
What grabbed me about Carriger’s work while reading Soulless was her quirky use of language. Similar to what I try to do with Simon Wentworth in my Time Weavers books, e.g., Too Rich to Die*. Carriger’s Alexia Tarrabotti has a strong-willed, unforgiving relationship with the world. She interprets things in unique ways that draw us in and share her amusement. Even when the chips are down, the tension runs high, and the situation is hopeless, Carriger manages to maintain that tension without sacrificing Miss Tarabotti’s wit which is no small trick. Here are a couple of my faves:
“… neat as a new penny in a black dress and white apron.”
“It sent tingling shocks through Alexia’s entire body — a most delightful sensation, better than hot tea on a cold morning.”
As a lesson in craft, Soulless, provides a terrific example of PoV (point of view) technique. It’s written in the third person, usually in Miss Tarabotti’s PoV, but at times switches PoV from one paragraph to the next. I don’t read a lot of romance (and I suspect that Soulless is shelved in fantasy/paranormal/steampunk more often than in romance), but a romance writer (and damn, I can’t remember her name!) told me that rapid PoV switching is common in romance so that we can experience erotica on both or each or every side of the, as it were, ahem, equation.
The guiding rule (even in LitFic) is to restrict changes in PoV to chapter breaks or section breaks (i.e., when the author leaves an empty line or dingbats, like * * *, between paragraphs). I’ve broken that rule a few times in cases of intense action, like the scene in The Sensory Deception* when Farley has to choose between his best friend and the woman he loves, but am usually quite careful with it. The PoV switch rule helps keep readers’ minds uncluttered; few readers are conscious of the PoV, but if you bounce around without making it clear whose head you’re looking out of, they get a sense of dissonance and that’s when people set books down.
When she makes frequent, rapid PoV switches, Carriger sticks to the spirit of the rule by establishing the PoV immediately in every switch.
Gail Carriger also provides some nice examples of reasonable uses of adverbs. Use of adverbs and adjectives usually indicate that the author can’t think of a good verb and, instead, decorates verbs and nouns with these paltry modifiers. In this sentence:
Gail Carriger is obviously a genius.
Finally, as a physicist, I’m can’t help but notice mistakes when it comes to certain phenomena, for example, the timing relationship between lunar and solar activity. On the night of a full moon she writes,
“…those few hours after sunrise, before the moon climbed into the sky.”
But a full moon rises at the same time that the sun sets — it’s pretty much the defining quality of what it means for a moon to be full. I don’t blame Carriger, I blame the editors! (please, when you catch a mistake of any kind, always blame the editor.) Plus, ahem, there was this instance in The God Patent when I made a similar mistake, not with a full moon, of course, but with the relative timing of sunrise and the position of a waning gibbous overhead.
Fortunately I have plenty of watchful readers keen to point these things out!
