Audiobook review: Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series

Soulless is the first book of the series

I can't remember if I've ever discussed audiobooks before on this blog, at least in their own separate posts. (I may have mentioned previously how much I LOVE the audiobooks for The Illuminae Files, but they didn't get their own review.)

I love audiobooks, but I enjoy them most when I get something extra from the experience that I couldn't get while reading it, you know, traditionally. For me, that "something extra" usually relies really heavily on the narration-- I love different voices and emotion. (Am I weird? I only like to listen to audiobooks for books I've already read. Like watching a movie adaptation.)

And that's a big part of what I loved about Emily Gray's narration of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series. Without getting into too much detail about the plot (at risk of spoilers), Gray had to distinguish between so many characters and their accents and personalities: the ever-practical English Alexia; the overemotional Scottish werewolf alpha, Lord Maccon; the English, soft-spoken beta, Professor Lyall; the English, flamboyantly fabulous vampire, Lord Akeldama; Madame LeFoux, the masculine-presenting French inventor; and so on, and so forth.

The novels (five in all), which I already loved anyway, really came alive for me through Gray's narration, and I think I blitzed through all the audiobooks even more quickly than I read them in book form. And then I had major book hangover when I was finished.

If you're looking for some supernatural steampunk fun, with lots of tea and parasols and one of my favorite book universes ever to exist, I would highly recommend these audiobooks, whether or not you've already read them.