Manners & Mutiny
Manners and Mutiny is the fourth and final book in Gail Carriger’s Finishing School series. With the end of Finishing School in sight, there are dinner parties to attend, and a grand ball to plan. For Sophronia though, she’s much more concerned about the well-being of her sweetheart Soap, after his near escape from death in the last book. On top of that, the dastardly Pickleman remain afoot, and Sophronia has yet to uncover what their true plans are, and whom she can trust to help take them down.
This final chapter more or less starts off like those before it… Sophronia continues to insert herself into situations and always finds herself getting into whatever trouble can be found. As this is the climax of the series though, all of the action and adventure in this book is heightened, with great consequences for all those involved. There are some great character reveals in this book, but nothing that I found too shocking. Mademoiselle Geraldine’s after all is basically a spy school, so it’s understandable that there are some secrets that the staff have been playing close to the vest. In the past, I have been annoyed with some of Sophronia’s meddling. Here though, there are real consequences to her meddling both to herself and to others. Seeing her struggle, and having to deal with the significant consequences of her actions felt very appropriate for the ending of this series.
Overall, I have found this whole series to be really cute. That’s the best way I can describe it. There is a great little tie-in at the end to Carriger’s other series, that I thought worked really well and was fun to see. The one thing I didn’t like about the end, while wrapping everything up, is that we really didn’t find out what happened to Dimity. It’s mentioned that the girls remained friends, but considering what a close friend she was, I wanted to know a little bit more about where she ended up, and what sort of life she had. I also would have liked to see some closure between Sophronia and Felix. It’s made clear, as the plot unfolds, that she judged him wrongly, but they never really got a chance to talk about it, so I would have liked to see that as well. Other than that though, there are so many things to like about this series - fantasy, steampunk, spy school, dirigibles, corsets, crumpets, the list goes on and on. If you are looking for a fun, quick reading adventure, I would definitely recommend this series to readers of all ages.
