Category Archives: Science Fiction

Review: ‘Etiquette & Espionage’ by Gail Carriger

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Finishing School Book the First
2013
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Fourteen years old and not at all ladylike, thats Sophronia Angelina Temminnick. She’s the youngest of the Temminnick girls and a terrible bother to her mother. After an incident involving a dumb waiter and a trifle, Sophronia is packed off to finishing school.

But Madam Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality is not quite what she expects. After an eventful journey she arrives to find a werewolf waiting and no obvious way aboard.

Making several new friends and learning to be ladylike, Sophronia becomes embroiled in a plot which sees her clambering around engine rooms, confronting thieves and setting fire to her mother’s gazebo. She also learns how to curtsey properly and to dance.

Set several decades before the author’s previous series, ‘The Alexia Tarrabotti Series’ and featuring characters from that series as children, this book is an admirable addition to her body of work and suitable for YA readers. The characters are interesting, well-rounded and develop as the novel progresses. The plot is engaging and mystery elements intriguing.

I enjoyed Gail Carriger’s earlier books and would recommend this new series. Now I just need to get the next book in the series.

Bye

Rose

Review: The Long Earth, Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

Good evening,

It’s just occurred to me that I forgot to review this book. No excuse really, I have a day job and sometimes it gets in the way of writing, before I know it things have got away from me.

Anyway, on with the purpose of this post.

The Long Earth is an interesting book, intelligent and gripping. And there should clearly be a sequel, because I want to know what happens next.

The hero, and he is a hero in the traditional sense of a flawed yet almost superhuman main character, is Joshua Valiente, who was born on another Earth, just a step away. When the Long Earth’s are discovered he rescues scores of children and returns them home. The discovery of untold numbers of Earth’s has an interesting effect on home, or Datum, Earth economics and politics as people drift away.

Eventually Joshua takes on a mission to see how far a person can step, with the assistance of the re-incarnated soul of a Tibetan motorcycle mechanic currently embodied in a computer. Along the way they discover new hominid species and societies of humans, with the help of ‘Sally’ another ‘natural Stepper’ like Joshua.

But back on Datum Earth, among those unable to Step at all a rebellion is brewing and the results will be devastating for everyone.

And I’m not saying anything else because I don’t want to spoil it for you.

This is an interesting new direction for Terry Pratchett (I love his Discworld books) but the fun, insightful nature of his writing clearly shows in this book. I have never read any of Stephen Baxter’s work so I can’t compare The Long Earth to any of them. However, I think I might have to take a trip to the library to find something of his to read.

That’s it, not my most insightful review I know, but I had to write it quickly while I had a decent net connection,

Good bye

Rose