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.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.
Kort och gott är det en charmig, underhållande och lättläst bok med roliga karaktärer, unikt språk, intressanta steampunk-element och en fascinerande värld. Det jag däremot saknar är en starkare handling med mer yttre och inre konflikter, men på det stora hela är Etiquette & Espionage en fartfylld bok berättad med glimten i ögat som passar perfekt som lätt sommarläsning på stranden eller i hängmattan. Jag ser absolut fram emot nästa äventyr med Sophronia och gänget!