Heartless

Reading till 4 in the morning before work? Of course, yes.
Well, this installment was a bit less logical than the previous one. All that business with octomaton was not so well thought out as it seemed to me. Anyway, the good thing is that I already get used to the sarcastic writing. However, it does make it more difficult to care for the characters.

Premise
I had this and the last volume for the series lying on my bookshelf for years. I read the previous volume “Blameless” in 2016 and it is not optimal to read the story again after so many years, because I lose somehow interest and connection to the story. Unfortunately on the internet, I could not find any recaps, but on the other side, I read the mangas. That makes it as if I have read the first three books one and a half times. And I did not lose the connections to the original characters of Alexia, Conall, Lord Akeldama, and so on. I thought of writing this premise because it will highly impact my review.

Plot
I found the plot pretty uninteresting, besides a few revelations.

Characters
Regarding a couple of characters, Prof. Lyall and Ivy, we assisted a big change that looked out of character to me. I love dynamic characters: characters that change sides, that grow, that are well-developed. However, to write a well-round evolution, you need a larger amount of pages, to show the change to readers. I am not sure if these changes were hinted at in the previous books already and I don't remember them or if they were meant to be unexpected.

Conclusion
Overall, I found it a nice read. I enjoyed going back to my beloved and funny characters, but I found myself not very involved in the story and found those revelations not quite fitting.

This series is so much fun, I'm glad I got back to it. Delightful language, lots of action and tea drinking, a giant mechanical octopus, zombie porcupines mixed with vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and a mystery. Also, a pregnant protagonist is not really common in steampunk/paranormal novels. It's classy and fun! I will read the next one in the series.??

Another fun Victorian(ish) tongue-in-cheek mystery. This one actually had a slower pace (the main character, Alexia, was 8 months pregnant and could only manage a determined waddle) and focused much more on character development, which I enjoyed.

If you want a break from serious books, I can recommend this series.