My second YA espionage novel in a little over a week! I thought this would be a good follow-up and foil to Ally Carter’s series. I really enjoy Carriger’s urban fantasy steampunk series The Parasol Protectorate. This is her new series called Finishing School. It is set in the same universe and set a few decades before the events. A couple of the tertiary characters in the PP series are in this one as well.

The focus in this book was less on supernatural relations than the first series, and more Harry Potter style school for female spies or intelligencers. Carriger’s books are really fun. This spy book works more for me because of the sci-fi and steampunk variations. This series is more tween and young adult targeted than the late teen margeted Parasol Protectorate though. This was one of the things that I like about PP, but this new series may get more mature as the protagonist grows from age 14.

Carriger tends to write charming and adorable characters. The cast is usually quite diverse and even though there isn’t a gay character (that we know of) in this series yet, there is a person of colour as a supporting character for the first time. Another thing about Carriger I like is her characters often speak in that weird Victorian steampunk, but it means she uses what now seem to be archaic words. I like the idea that real teenagers actually read a book like this that has sometimes more advanced words than some adult drugstore novels.

All in all, a fun start to this new series.

Read May 19th 2013.