Book Review: Waistcoats & Weaponry by Gail Carriger

Pros: fun, quirky characters

Cons: more action than plot

Sophronia and her friends are enjoying school a year after their last adventure when Sidheag receives a distressing letter.  She disappears and when Dimity and Sophronia attend Sophronia’s brother’s engagement ball, they rejoin her and stumble upon several plots.

This is the third book in the Finishing School series, and it is best read in order as plot points from the previous books, specifically several direct consequences from book two, are important to what’s happening here.  

As with the other books, the girls are all quirky and fun to read about.  We see them apply their talents in different ways as they rise to the challenges they face.  The book is a quick and enjoyable read.

Unlike in the earlier books where the girls come across something strange and decide to investigate it, actively looking for new clues, in this volume they’re helping their friend and stumble across the mystery purely by chance.  They find out more of what’s going on in the wider political world and several of them have to make decisions that will greatly affect their futures.

Sophronia has several major decisions to make in this book regarding her future: whether she likes Felix Mersey, whose father is a pickleman (a political position Sophronia abhors) enough to form an attachment with him; what kind of future relationship she wants with Soap, whose social standing is far beneath hers but whose advice and friendship she greatly appreciates; and what patron she wants when she graduates, as Lord Akeldama’s been sending her gifts in an attempt to sway her in his direction.  

I personally found the action on the train less interesting than what happened before it.  I love the school and the dynamic there, and was a bit sad that so much of the book took place off of it.  Having said that, the train did show off the girls’ prowess and contained some fun action sequences.  

I’m really looking forward to book 4, Manners & Mutiny, which I believe will conclude the series.

Book Review: Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger

Pros: fun characters, interesting mystery, dry humour

Cons:

For Parents: minor violence, kissing

Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality makes course for London after picking up some gentlemen from Bunson and Lacroix’s Boys’ Polytechnique.  They’re to see the results of an experiment in navigating the aetherosphere, something that would greatly reduce travel times.  But not everyone wants the experiment to succeed.

In many ways this is a light-hearted Harry Potter, if Harry went to a school for spies in a dirigible set in a steampunk Victorian England, cared more about fashion and Hermione was the protagonist.  This is the second book of Gail Carriger’s Finishing School series, and it maintains the same level of propriety crossed with rule breaking as the first.  The humour is dry, the sort you acknowledge with a snort rather than a guffaw, despite how unbecoming either action would be in polite society. 

Sophronia and her gang of misfits are such fun characters, though due to exam results, she finds herself working alone more than she’d prefer, in this volume.  It was also nice to see her encounter real consequences for the kind of work she’s training to do, making her wonder if this really is what she wants.

The mystery involves several threads, some of which harken back to the events of the previous book.  There’s also the knowledge at the end that though things were resolved, there are still some questions to be answered.

If you haven’t read these books, you’re missing out.