Carriger, Gail. Etiquette & Espionage. Book 1 of the Finishing School series. 2013. 307p. ISBN 9780316190084. Available both as an eBook on Overdrive and at FIC CAR on the library shelves.
Sophronia Temminnick loves to tinker and explore, but it is frowned upon for girls from reputable families to be involved in such frivolous activities as climbing, exercise, and education. As the youngest girl in her family, she’s a bother to her mother, who only wishes that Sophronia would settle down long enough to learn some proper etiquette, become a proper young lady, and marry a wealthy individual.
Faced with such an impossible task, Lady Temminnick desperately enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality, hoping that her daughter will return a proper lady, fit to be married off.
Everything goes wrong from the start, however, as Sophronia and her escort are attacked by armed flyway men looking for “the prototype.” The Finishing School is in fact an assassin and espionage outfit where proper young ladies get trained in the deadly arts as well as the more mundane ones with the hope that they will be both lethal and regal, young ladies of quality. Sophronia has been sponsored by someone, and now she’s hoping to learn as much as she can, as this type of education is more adapt to her skills.
The flyway men return to the school, threatening an assault if the prototype is not turned over to them. Unfortunately, Monique, the agent who failed her test when she impersonated Mademoiselle Geraldine to collect Sophronia, has hidden it somewhere. Now it’s up to Sophronia and her hodgepodge of friends to discover its location to prevent the school’s destruction.
A great steampunk tale in the style of The Mark of the Dragonfly, Leviathan, The Inventor's Secret, or Worldshaker, readers will enjoy the mechanical and magical creatures that populate this Victorian England universe. Sophronia's story continues in Curtsies and Conspiracies. For more historical spying, consider Palace of Spies.
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