After a stop with more adventures than you would think could occur during such a brief interval at the fictitious Maltese Tower dirigible outpost, the Spotted Custard makes its way to India for some further adventures with Scottish werewolves, Indian vampires, a werelion and weremonkeys. Gifted with a dirigible by her vampire father, Prudence cobbles together a crew (primarily recommended to her by her father), paints her dirigible red with black spots, names it The Spotted Custard, and sets off for India because of something to do with tea.

Rue therefore has two fathers and an impossible mother. For some reason I am not entirely clear on because I have not yet read that far, but possibly because when she was a baby all the vampires in England wanted to kill her, Rue was also adopted and raised by an extremely flamboyant gay vampire, Lord Akeldama, thereby neutralizing the vampire threat. Prudence is the metanatural daughter of a werewolf and a preternatural, Lord and Lady Maccon (who has no soul and neutralizes supernatural powers), which means she can temporarily take supernatural powers and causes supernaturals to become mortal while she does. It goes to follow, then, that this book is smut adjacent rather than true smut, but the hints were so much more satisfying than some of the steamier stories I’ve been reading that my primary concern was that the love story might not resolve in book 2. Anticipate reading both Prudence and Imprudence for the whole story. Prudence is a story in and of itself, but it is also the first half a love story rather than the whole love story. Indeed, not doing so would make some of the character connections slightly more mysterious. As it happens, in The Parasol Protectorate series, Carriger does explain much of the steampunk/supernatural verbiage (except claviger for some reason), but one can infer the meanings without too much difficulty, so I wouldn’t say you must read the prior series first. I wondered if this was intentional, as if the reader is meant to be a little in the dark (because immersion) or if it had all been explained earlier in time.

This series is centered on the daughter of protagonists of a prior series, so there’s a great deal of overlap, and Carriger does not explain many of the terms that are frequently used in the supernatural, steampunk, Victorian setting. I checked out the audiobook for this first book in the series, Prudence, and true love was born. The synopsis of the book was slightly outrageous, so it naturally wormed its way into my brain and stuck there. The third book in this series popped up as a new acquisition in my digital library, and I jokingly suggested to Ingrid that she read it, as she had been attempting to branch out. Heat Factor: Butterflies – It’s the hint of something thereĬharacter Chemistry: Solid, but not primary to the story

The custard protocol