![]() ![]() Now, as she sneaks around the dirigible school, eavesdropping on the teachers’ quarters and making clandestine climbs to the ship’s boiler room, she learns that there may be more to a field trip to London than is apparent at first. Furthermore, Sophronia got mixed up in an intrigue over a stolen device and had a cheese pie thrown at her in a most horrid display of poor manners. Sophronia’s first year at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality has certainly been rousing! For one thing, finishing school is training her to be a spy (won’t Mumsy be surprised?). Overall, Sophronia is a great character – competent, loyal, and full of sass and curiosity that gets her into trouble – and this was a great start to a series. I need this information…for, uh, reasons. Another highlight throughout was the lessons, though I am sad that the author didn’t explicitly describe how to kill someone with a handkerchief. One of my favourite aspects of this book was the lack of romance Sophronia has a subtle flirtation with a couple boys (her sootie friend Soap, and evil-genius-in-training Lord Mersey), but there’s no “tru luv 4EVA” nonsense, which was a nice change for a YA series. She also managed to collect a tight-knit group of friends amongst the other first years, plus one mean girl nemesis. Unsurprisingly, Sophronia turns out to be exceedingly talented as a spy, and immediately puts her new training to good use: climbing around the flying ship uncovering sinister plots, making friends with the sooties belowdecks, and rescuing a mechanical dog named Bumbersnoot. Yes, the whole outsider/newbie thing is an often-used trope, but it’s effective and allows the reader to learn about this new world at the same pace as the character. Sophronia is accepted as a covert recruit, meaning that she has no knowledge of the school or its secret purpose. As it turns out, the visitor is there to escort Sophronia to “ Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality” – which is my #2 dream school: a flying dirigible where young English ladies of good breeding are trained to become spies and assassins. When we first meet our heroine, she is hijacking a dumbwaiter in an attempt to eavesdrop on a secret meeting between her mother and an unknown visitor, but she ends up crashing spectacularly to the ground, destroying a cake in the process. This book, I loved – it was just so much fun! Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year’s education. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage–in the politest possible ways, of course. ![]() At Mademoiselle Geraldine’s, young ladies learn to finish…everything. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.īut Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners–and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Obviously, spoilers for the preceding books in each review.įourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. As is my custom, I reread all the books in the series before reading the final, and decided to attempt to review all of them. The Finishing School series consists of four books: Etiquette & Espionage, Curtsies & Conspiracies, Waistcoats and Weaponry, and Manners & Mutiny, the last of which just came out in November 2015. So when I first heard about the Finishing School series, a YA series set 25 years before the events of Soulless ( Parasol Protectorate book 1), I was all over it. Namely, a Victorian England where supernatural creatures are fully integrated into society: all the cool kids have ghosts in their houses, werewolves constitute Her Majesty’s armed forces, and vampires set the tone for fashion and culture. I’m not usually into steampunk – I don’t really even understand what it is – but I read Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series based on a recommendation from the Fug Girls, and really enjoyed the world it was set in. The Finishing School series by Gail Carriger ![]()
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