HISTORICAL URBAN FANTASY YA REVIEW: Finishing School 1: Etiquette and Espionage - Gail Carriger

Release Date: 05/02/13
Publisher:  Atom

SYNOPSIS:

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to finishing school. Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. 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. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine's young ladies learn to finish ...everything. 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. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year's education.


REVIEW:

Having sat back and thoroughly enjoyed Gail’s Parasol Protectorate I was more than interested to see how this world and if the authors writing style would translate for the younger audience. What unfurls within is a book of adventure for the young teen reader, it brings the wonderfully inventive world of Gail’s imagination to the reader wonderfully and when added to a lead character that will not only capture the readers heart but be a person that they can identify with all round makes this a cracking title.

Back this up with an overall arc that leaves you wanting just one more chapter before putting it down and overall it’s a book that I’d recommend for not only the young market but also adults who enjoy Steampunk. The only real qualm that I had with the book was the neat way that it was wrapped up towards the end, but overall definitely a series that will make not only a splash but a major strike for the younger reader market. Cracking.