***The Starry-Eyed Revue***: finishing school

Title: Etiquette & Espionage
Author: Gail Carriger
Narrator: Moira Quirk
Series: Finishing School, book #1
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Publication Date: February 5, 2013
Source: purchased
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

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.

Fourteen-year-old 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. Temminick 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.

Set in the same world as the Parasol Protectorate, this YA series debut is filled with all the saucy adventure and droll humor Gail Carriger's legions of fans have come to adore.

Sophronia. Sophronia. Sophronia. That name pops into my head at the most random times throughout the week ever since reading Etiquette and Espionage. The chick's voice that narrates the audio is so fun to listen to. Sometimes, I'd just find myself not really paying attention to the words so much as how cool it sounded as she said them. Sophronia Temminick isn't the only name that stuck out to me. There's Dimity, her accomplice, and Soap and Vieve, whose characters I just adored. Initially, I will admit I was a bit overwhelmed by all of the unique names and figuring out who was who, but they grew on me.

I love that this book is both charming and devious at the same time. These girls have been sent to finishing school to learn about proper manners while also learning how to properly poison their future husbands. Doesn't get any better than that. Hehehe.

I really love the cover of this book. It's pretty awesome. Something I don't love about this book? Steampunk. There are airborne highway men in balloons, mechanical servants, and even steam-powered dogs. The idea of dogs that let little puffs of smoke out when they potty is just too much for me.

Can't wait to read the next book in the series to see if there are any budding romances, since the seeds were pretty much planted in Etiquette & Espionage.

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About the author:

Ms. Carriger writes steampunk urbane fantasy comedies of manners to cope with being raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. She escaped small town life and inadvertently acquired several degrees in Higher Learning. She then traveled the historic cities of Europe, subsisting entirely on biscuits secreted in her handbag. She now resides in the Colonies, surrounded by a harem of shoes, where she insists on tea imported directly from London and cats that pee into toilets. Her Parasol Protectorate books are all New York Times Bestsellers.

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