Waiting On: Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger (6)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature hosted by Breaking the Spine

Title: Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1)

Author: Gail Carriger
Release Date: February 5th, 2013
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

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.

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is the bane of her mother's existence. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper etiquette at tea--and god forbid anyone see her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. She enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But little do Sophronia or her mother know that this is a school where ingenious young girls learn to finish, all right--but it's a different kind of finishing. Mademoiselle Geraldine's certainly trains young ladies in the finer arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also in the other kinds of finishing: the fine arts of death, diversion, deceit, espionage, and the modern weaponries. Sophronia and her friends are going to have a rousing first year at school.

First in a four book YA series set 25 years before the Parasol Protectorate but in the same universe.

[Summary Source: Goodreads]

Please note: I LOVE STEAMPUNK. Most of my friends are like, "What's that?" (Since apparently people have been living under a rock since the dawn of awesomeness.) And that's when I get all enthusiastically encyclopedia-y sounding and tell them all about the glorious premise books like this one are built upon. At the end of it all, I inform them that the "Western" with Will Smith that everyone's seen (Wild Wild West) is most definitely Steampunk, thank you very much.

Shmanyways, you could ask why I'm excited for this book, but the rant above and the beautiful cover pictured even further above should really be enough to explain all of that. But if it's not, I've read 3 out of 5 of the Parasol Protectorate series and I loved them so really the question is: Why WOULDN'T I want to read a YA series set in the same universe?

So what are YOU waiting for this week? Let me know in the comments below!