BooksOfTheMoon

Like the rest of this series, this final book is fairly fluffy but great fun to read. I enjoyed the time I spent with Sophronia and her friends on the floating espionage/finishing school that is Mademoiselle Geraldine’s. This one picks up the threads that have been left lying around by the previous books and deftly weaves them into an action-packed finale. I was pleased to see that a theory I’ve had since almost the start of the series was confirmed, and it was nice to see Agatha get some cool stuff to do, since she’s very much been a background character to date. Sidheag was off-screen this volume, which is a shame, since she’s a great character, but she had her time in the limelight last time round.

There’s a great action sequence towards the end that really sees the stakes raised and it’s great to see Sophronia take everything she’s learned over the last four books and put it all to good use. The romance between Sophronia and Soap finally takes off as well, although complicated by the events of the end of the last book.

It might not be great art, but it’s perfect for a weekend read in the autumn sun. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the series, and will definitely look out Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series, which is set in the same world.

There’s more frothy, fashion-filled fun as Sophronia and gang return for espionage and carrying themselves properly. This time Sophronia and her friends attend a pre-wedding party for Sophronia’s brother, and help Sidheag stowaway on a train heading back to Scotland to deal with a serious problem in her clan of werewolves.

As with the others, this is a huge amount of fun, even if Sophronia does spend a lot of it angsting over the two delicious boys who are fighting to fall at her feet. But we do get some respite from that with politics! The politics of this world are all about balance, trying to keep the differing supernatural and human factions equally disgruntled. And now there’s something that upsets that balance, and it’s up to Sophronia and friends to do something about it.

I’ve seen complaints that Sophronia is a Mary-Sue character. This might be right, but I’ve read enough golden age science fiction featuring “hero scientists” (Doc Smith and Heinlein, I’m looking at you!), to suspect that we’d not be having this conversation if the protagonist was male.

Tangentially related, I’ve recently got very into the Hugo, Girl podcast, and one of the segments they have is “boob talk”, where they talk about egregious descriptions of (usually) female characters. This has made me much more aware of it when I come across this in writing. Something that I might have not really paid attention to before now stands out quite a lot. There are a lot of references to Sophronia’s looks and figure here, which I guess makes sense in a series about a school for female spies – as Lady Linnette says, seduction as a tool of espionage has a long and (maybe) honourable history. Still, it was slightly uncomfortable to read, especially about a teenage girl.

Still, notwithstanding that, the book is hugely readable and a lot of fun. The status quo has been well and truly shaken up and I can’t wait to see where it goes in the final book.

Picking up from where the last book left off, we discover more about the macguffin that everyone was trying to get their hands on last time, and also get some insight into the political machinations of vampires and werewolves. There’s more floating school based shenanigans and the relationships between the girls deepen. There’s also the beginnings of a love triangle (something that always makes me cringe a bit) between Sophronia, Soap and Felix. And speaking of Soap, while I enjoy a fun steampunk book as much as the next person, one without much in the way of introspection of class feels a bit frothy. The sooties are the same age as the girls in the school but their circumstances couldn’t be more different.

But other than that, the book was a huge amount of fun to read, and with dry humour and silly names, it’s clearly making fun of a certain kind of twee British aristocrat. I’ll certainly be reading the others in the series.