2.5 stars, rounding up to 3. It's still enjoyable, but of the series so far this is the worst, I think. The problem lies not with the plot, nor with the supporting characters, who are as enjoyable as ever. I particularly liked the extra emphasis on Professor Lyall, for instance, and Ivy is always a treat. It's Alexia who's making me roll my eyes. Her soulless capacity has tended, over the series, to damp down her emotions and that's fine, but the use of this as a driver for humour becomes honestly a little bit laboured here. For instance: trapped in a hive house that's disintegrating around her, surrounded by hostile vampires and being attacked by a friend in a giant mechanical octopus, what finally causes Alexia to flip her lid is the overturning of a tray of treacle tarts. The loss of the tarts is the final straw, she shrieks, and I expect I'm supposed to find this funny but instead I'm rolling my eyes as Alexia goes from soulless to just plain silly. There's a tendency, in these books, to maintain an emotional smoothness of tone - a sort of overarching narrative smugness - and while it's entertaining to read there are points when it's plain inappropriate, turning character into caricature, and that's what happened here.