Review: Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

Published January 1st 2013

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. Temminnick 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.

What I thought I was going to read: A book about a girl that learns how to kill people in a Nikita-like way in a steampunk setting.
What the book is really about: A somewhat boring girl from 1800s in a steampunk world of vampires and werewolves whos family wants to to be more girly so they send her off to a school and they have no idea she will be learning how to kill people in an almost boring way.

This book would have been so much better if Carriger didn’t add in supernaturals. So many YA books have forced vampires and werewolves into their plot and Etiquette and Espionage jumped on the bandwagon. I’m not a big fan of vampires at all so that aspect was a little disappointing for me.

The lead female was kinda boring and was unemotional for 98% of the book. Her friends didn’t even seem to be her friends. I couldn’t really get into her as a character. I wish she was just a little more developed.

The writing was really good though. Gail Carriger is a really good writer but I was more into the writing then the story or the characters.

Overall, this is nothing like I was expecting and it really caught me off guard. It really messed me up and I never really got into the book because of that. This is a really cool book but it just wasn’t for me. I don’t know if I’ll continue with the series but I might some day.