This is the third book in Gail Carriger\u2019s \u201cFinishing School\u201d series, which is to say it\u2019s a YA book set in a steampunk Victorian world with vampires and werewolves, in which the main characters are students at a school of espionage that\u2019s housed in a dirigible. Most of the action in this one, though, takes place away from the school: our protagonist, Sophronia, has permission to leave campus for her brother\u2019s engagement ball, and her best friend Dimity is allowed to come with her, along with Dimity\u2019s brother Pillover and Sophronia\u2019s maybe love-interest, Felix Mersey, both of whom attend a boys\u2019 school for evil-geniuses-in-training. Meanwhile, Sophronia\u2019s friend Sidheag leaves school without permission: she learns that there\u2019s trouble in the werewolf pack she grew up with, and wants to be with them to try to set things right. And Soap, Sophronia\u2019s friend who works in the boiler room of the school (and totally has a crush on her), sneaks out as well, to keep an eye on her at the ball. When Sidheag shows up at the engagement ball, Sophronia agrees to help get her home to Scotland, and various other characters come along for the ride, which ends up including a mysterious train and run-ins with various enemies. <\/p>\n
I like the action scenes in this book, particularly the two excellent fight scenes between Sophronia and other female adversaries, and, as usual, Carriger\u2019s humorous writing, particularly some of the dialogue, is lots of fun. Not that this book is all action and fluff without emotion: I found myself on the verge of tears when it seemed like a character might die, and totally relieved when things took a different turn. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the third book in Gail Carriger\u2019s \u201cFinishing School\u201d series, which is to say it\u2019s a YA book set in a steampunk Victorian world with vampires and werewolves, in which the main characters are students at a school of espionage that\u2019s housed in a dirigible. Most of the action in this one, though, takes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-young-adultchildrens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}