Staff Pick (January12): Soulless Manga

Publisher: Yen Press
Item Code: JAN121311
SRP: $12.99
PREVIEWS Page #342
In Shops: 3/21/2012

The long wait is over! Soulless Manga is finally here!

For those of you not familiar with The Parasol Protectorate by New York Times-bestselling author Gail Carriger, this is one of my favorite book series: an intoxicatingly witty Steampunk mystery, Victorian-supernatural-romance with vampires, werewolves, silver tipped parasols, ridiculous hats, fine tea, and treacle tarts. In other words, it has everything. Gail Carriger’s first novel, Soulless, has been beautifully transformed into manga by Priscilla Hamby (aka rem), a rising star and winner of various manga competitions. The transition from novel to manga has done little to diminish Gail’s wit and Rem’s expressive art style does not disappoint!

Meet Alexia Tarabotti, a stubborn, bluestocking twenty-five-year-old spinster with no soul. Yes, like her Italian dead father, Alexia quite literally has no soul. She is a preternatural and has the ability to negate the unnatural when in close contact; the end result: she is kryptonite to the supernatural. Unlike her half-sisters, Felicity and Evylin Loontwill, Alexia is not the epitome of an English beauty; she's large-nosed and swarthy. But any suitor able to get passed her half-Italian good looks is turned away by a prickly personality and wry wit. Being a preternatural in a supernatural world is hard enough but, what is a girl to do if all the men around her are nitwits as well? Only the Lord Akeldama, flamboyant rove vampire and close friend, is able to understand Alexia’s frustrations.

Having to explain to the infuriating Lord Conall Maccon, head of Bureau of the Unnatural Registry (BUR) and local werewolf pack Alpha, how she ended up in the library, with a parasol, and a dead body lying on treacle tart is not one of Alexia’s fondest memories. But what is a lady to do when a vampire disregards social etiquette and rudely attacks? Of course she must defend herself, and if, by accident, the savage vampire is killed that is not her fault. Besides, isn’t the more important question: who would starve a vampire to the point of breaking societal rules?

The Order of the Brass Octopus has arrived!

~ Daria Medved