Their interactions with each other and the rest of the school’s staff and faculty (as well as other side characters, such as Dimity’s smart and sophisticated brother, Pillover) are ultimately what make this book an enjoyable read. Overall, I loved these girls and some of them put aside any sense of cattiness to befriend each other and work together. It would have been tempting to rely on stereotypes to craft these characters, but Carriger uses some tried-and-true character forms and takes original spins on them by giving her characters distinguishing quirks for the sake of gentle humor. Top that off with a vampire professor a werewolf captain a band of thieves known as flywaymen an anti-supernatural political group called the Picklemen and a plethora of automatons, and you’ve got yourself one fun supporting cast! Probably my favorite characters in the book are Sophronia and her school chums: the delicate-as-a-flower Dimity, the haughty Monique, the rough-and-tumble Scottish lass Sidheag, the painfully shy Agatha, and the prim and properly snobbish Preshea.
Populating the finishing school are a mix of professors who teach everything from dance to deadly games as the girls in attendance are taught not only to be fashionable ladies but also fashionable spies and assassins. Thus, the bulk of Sophronia’s development comes as a result of attending said finishing school and encountering fellow students, faculty, and staff – all while trying to uncover a mystery behind a missing device known as the prototype.
At first, Sophronia balks at the idea yet is quick to discover that Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality isn’t all that it purports to be. Sophronia’s story begins when her mother – who isn’t quite sure what to do with her resourceful and social grace-deprived daughter – opts to send her off to finishing school.
Fans of Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series and its heroine, Alexia Tarabotti, will find the same sharp wit, manners, and charisma here in Sophronia though the latter brings a sense of youthful innocence that endears her to readers in a non-cloying way, thus she and Alexia are not clones. Sophronia Temminnick serves as the principle protagonist and she’s an absolute delight. While the novel lacks a strong, rapid-fire plot, it has enough colorful characters, clever world-building, and genuine humor to keep it afloat for me.įor starters, the characters truly make this book. Etiquette and Espionage, the first novel in the Finishing School series, does exactly that thanks to Carriger’s trademark wit, which embeds itself into each character and scene. While most steampunk, I have found, tends to court the darker side of the story spectrum, there are those works that waltz on the light side but avoid becoming full-fledged comedies.
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