'I really enjoyed this, it combines my love of steampunk/ victorian and harry potter/young adult series like novels. She credits the travel journals of the Victorian era as well as the writings of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and PG Wodehouse as influences on her style of prose and plotting. Her second novel Changeless placed her on the New York Times best seller list, as did her third novel Blameless. She is both archeologist and author of steampunk fiction. Gail Carriger is the pseudonym for Tofa Borregaard. Sophronia and her classmates are in for a wild first year, indeed. These excellent students do learn the skills of proper dance, dress and manners, but they also learn how to appropriately kill divert, deceive, spy, and handle a weapon against all foes. There is one catch to this whole finishing school business, and it lies in exactly the kind of finishing these girls were meant to complete. Surely this will turn Sophronia into the proper young lady she ought to be. Teminnick, her mother, enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. A tomboy more curious about the inner workings of a clock and the joys of climbing a tree than she is about etiquette at tea time, Sophronia is disappointing, and not just because of her horrid curtsy.

Sophronia at age fourteen is a pest in the eyes of her mother. While it is a challenge to curtsy like a lady, it is quite another feat to throw a knife like you mean to kill.

Etiquette and espionage