Sophronia is 14 years old, from a very proper (and very
large) family – and she is expected to be a lady. Which is unfortunate, because
she doesn’t exactly fit – as becomes clear when she spills trifle all over a
visiting lady while climbing in the dumb waiter; it all seemed like such a good
idea at the time.
In despair, her mother sends her to finishing school –
Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality, which
only the very best ladies go to.
Of course, her mother doesn’t know about the advanced curriculum in the
floating school – held aloft by 3 giant blimps. The studies of poisons and
weapons, of tumbling, of lying and manipulations; everything an intelligence
gatherer – or an assassin – would need.
Learning alone in such a school would be a story in and
of itself – but one of Sophronia’s fellow students is up to something –
something that has even her teachers perturbed and angry and may risk the
school itself. If that weren’t motivation enough, Sophronia doesn’t like her
very much and is determined to get involved.
I love the delightful tone of this book, a tone that is
common to all of Gail Carriger’s steampunks. We have the delightful formality
of the time – the speech, the mode of dress, the stilted, powerfully
restrictive modes of etiquette and proper behaviour all combine to ensconce us
firmly in the Victorian era. Yet at the same time it’s funny and fun, there’s a
lightness to it that both pokes fun at the rigid strictures of the time while
at the same time using them to produce endless fun and a lot of good humour.
Even the very basis of the school rests on the inherent
jarring juxtaposition of what the finishing school is. Here are young ladies of
quali-tay learning all the proper
(and relatively useless or frivolous) things such a young lady should learn –
the proper way to dress, the way to speak, the way to address people of varying
ranks; manners and deportment and attire and posture and polite conversation
over dainty teacups and all the other important and vital information.
And then mix it up with the art of espionage and assassination. How does one
order a lamb dinner AND strychnine when on a budget? What is the best way to
hide a knife in one’s décolletage?
