Prudence Akeldama is a very special child, a meta-natural
with the power to steal the powers of vampires and werewolves and child of
three of the most powerful people in the British Empire – she is destined to be
change the world
The first mission of which is for her and her merry band
of friends to get on their new airship (the Spotted Custard) to float to India,
to ostensibly discover a new source of tea.
Except quickly they find themselves in far deeper
intrigue than they ever imagined
This was a very fun book. We had some delightfully
amusing characters – Rue’s complete irreverence towards society, her shifting
of personalities because of the many excellent influences in her life. She is
skilled, capable, confident and pretty much determined to take the world by
storm. I kind of love how she has this iron-hard self-assurance. In many
characters it would be annoying – but it worked with Rue. Her confidence, her
fierce belief in herself, her willingness to jump into any situation confident
that her unique abilities, her skills and her relatives to pull her out of any
problems she gets in.
We also have Gail Carriger’s excellent writing style that
wonderfully uses flowery Victorian style with her humour and dash of silliness
that really makes it work.
(Example: “She
inspired, at even the best balls, a sensation of immanent dread. It was one of
the reason she was always at the top of all invitation lists. Dread had such an
agreeable affect on society’s upper crust.”)
I think the story could have been vastly improved if Rue
were directing the story. If she went to India with a genuine mission rather
than pretty much stumbling on the plot and then, somewhat, ineptly, then
stagger around it
The book, sadly, has many problems. Above that there are two
main ones. The first of which is that it is covering areas of colonialism,
imperialism et al with a very shallow hand which is going to be dubious in any circumstances
and I will come back to,
The second is that the Custard Protocol directly follows on from The Parasol Protectorate and it really doesn’t live up to the
standards that that series set
