I enjoyed this book more than the first in this series, maybe just because I was more in the mood for it, or maybe because the setting and characters are largely already established, which lets things flow more smoothly. The book opens with an interruption: fifteen-year-old Sophronia Temminick and her best friend, Dimity, both students at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality, are pulled from class by a teacher. Having the book start in the middle of a school-day (and giving Sophronia time to think as she walks down the halls to wherever she’s being taken) works as a way to ease the reader back into this world of a finishing school that specializes in espionage, is housed in a dirigible, and has mechanical household staff and lessons in “drawing-room music and subversive petits-fours” (2). The interruption turns out to be for the girls’ six-month review, which is a hands-on exam of what they’ve learned so far: this test, though, is only the first that Sophronia faces throughout the book.
As in the last book, there are questions of intrigue and politics and danger: in this one, someone seems to be out to kidnap Dimity and her brother Pillover; there’s also a new technology that will allow dirigibles to go higher than ever before, and a question of who will control the production and sale of that technology: the government? vampires? an anti-paranormal group called the Picklemen? And as in the last book, Sophronia has to deal with all this while also figuring out boarding school/teenage life/growing up: in this book there are social difficulties to navigate, the realization that actions can have bigger consequences than intended, and also a romance subplot where Sophronia finds herself being courted by the son of a duke, while also realizing that Soap, who works in the school’s boiler room and who she’s been thinking of as just a friend, clearly has more than friendly feelings for her.
The humor/silliness of this book is a big part of its appeal. On Sophronia’s friend Sidheag: “Sidheag could be quite crass, the result of having been raised by men, or Scots, or soldiers, or werewolves, or all four” (21). On the young Genevieve Lefoux: “Sophronia was struck, yet again, by how old Vieve always sounded and acted. One would never have guessed from her speech that she was ten. From her actions, occasionally, yes. She did bounce” (54). On a vampire-teacher’s facial hair: “His mustache was a fluffy caterpillar of curiosity, perched and ready to inquire, dragging the vampire along behind it on the investigation” (81). There’s also a great/hilarious scene with a mechanical chaise longue.
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