Literature / The Finishing School Series

Sophronia Temminnick in all her intelligencer glory.

The Finishing School series by Gail Carriger is set in the same world as The Parasol Protectorate, only 25 years earlier, and features a finishing academy located in a giant caterpillar-like dirigible floating over Dartmoor in which young ladies are taught to ... finish everything and everyone, as needed. There is steampunk etiquette! There is well-dressed espionage! There is Victorian fake food! There is a mechanical sausage dog named Bumbersnoot! The first book, Etiquette & Espionage, released Feb 5, 2013, was an instant New York Times Bestseller.

The series concerns an unconventional young girl, Sophronia Temminnick, who is sent to a finishing school by her mother after an incident at home. At first despondent, Sophronia changes her mind when she realizes that they do not just teach manners at Mademoiselle Geraldine's, but espionage. Quite delighted, she stays on and embarks on many adventures.

There are four books in the series:

• Etiquette & Espionage
• Curtsies & Conspiracies
• Waistcoats & Weaponry
• Manners & Mutiny

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Tropes:

• Academy of Adventure: Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing School. It's even located in an airship.
• The Ace: Sophronia is the first covert recruit in six years and got the best score on the six-month test in the history of the school (although that might have been inflated as a test). Lady Linette often worries that she'll surpass her teachers.
• Action Fashionista: The majority of Mademoiselle Geraldine's girls are just as into fashion as they are into crime. Sophronia gets in on it herself sometimes, much to her own horror.
• Action Girl: Sophronia, Sidheag, Monique, Lady Linette and many others in the school.
• Afraid of Blood: Dimity faints at the sight of it.
• Alliterative Title: Every book in the series.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: In Manners & Mutiny, the Picklemen succeed in stealing the school itself, intending to use it as their base to take control of all of London's mechanicals. Sophronia, the sooties, Mademoiselle Geraldine, and Professor Braithwope have to sabotage it from the inside to stop them.
• Alpha Bitch: Monique de Pelouse, full stop. Preshea becomes her minion and later takes up the job full-time when Monique graduates.
• Arranged Marriage: Late in Waistcoats & Weaponry, the dewan does this for Sidheag and Captain Niall, although they're still only engaged, because by society's standards a young, unmarried woman cannot live with a werewolf pack, with no blood relatives around anymore. Since Sidheag is not of age yet, the dewan makes clear he expects a long engagement.
• Big Eater: Pillover was quite delighted at how nicer the food was at Mademoiselle Geraldine's compared to Bunson's.
• Big Friendly Dog: Captain Niall ties his hat to his head so it won't fall off when he transforms in his werewolf form for this very purpose. On their first meeting, the provincial Sophronia is quite frightened at first but then she sees the hat and recognizes the Captain.
• Bitch Alert: Monique's introduction scene. Sophronia has a feeling that she is being sneered at, and she is right.
• Black Widow: Preshea desperately wants to become one. She's already plotting how to best kill her first husband. The novel Poison and Protect set in the future indicates she was successful with four men before she fell In Love with the Mark.
• Blue Blood: Most of the girls in the school are gentry, if not nobility outright. The Bunson boys play it straighter, having the sons and heirs of noblemen in their ranks. Felix, a Viscount and heir to a Dukedom, is the main example.
• Book on the Head: Used during poise classes, as can be seen in the trailer of the second book.
• Call-Forward:
  • Sidheag Maccon is a major character in the first three books, and her and Captain Niall's departure from the series are directly connected to the off-page events, first mentioned in The Parasol Protectorate, regarding how Conall Maccon came to London and took over the Woolsey Pack.
  • Genevieve "Vieve" Lefoux and her aunt Beatrice play major roles. Beatrice did mention in Heartless that Sidheag used to be a student of hers.
  • The prototype everyone is after in book 1 is for the crystalline valves used in aethographic transmitters, a prominent form of communications in The Parasol Protectorate.
  • At the end, Sophronia becomes Alexia Tarabotti's governess as her latest assignment, nodding to a mention in Blameless about a really fantastic governess she used to have as a child. It's also implied that she's the soon-to-be aunt of Alexia's Muggle Best Friend Ivy.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Bunson's trains evil geniuses, and ranks their students by how evil they are. Pillover is even promoted for betraying them, as treachery is a rather strong form of evil.
• Chekhov's Gun: The fake food that Mademoiselle Geraldine is so fond of are actually explosives, and see some use in the final book.
• Combat Hand Fan: Bladed fans are one of the many weapons Mademoiselle Geraldine's trains its girls to use. Sophronia turns out to be a natural, and considers making it her preferred weapon.
• Damsel in Distress: Dimity in the second book, several times. Since her parents are manufacturing the crystalline valves, the Westminster Hive tries to kidnap her and her brother as leverage. Sophronia rescues her every time.
• Dances and Balls: It is Victorian England. One coming out ball for a debutante in each book so far.
• Dark Action Girl: Monique de Pelouse. Her minion Preshea seems to be heading toward it as well.
• Deadly Euphemism: It is a finishing school in the sense of learning how to finish anything and anyone.
• Do Wrong, Right: When Sophronia is caught sneaking out, Lady Linette punishes her for a) being seen and b) not blackmailing her enemy to keep quiet beforehand. The actual punishment for sneaking out is more of an afterthought, and Lady Linette all but encourages her to keep trying.
• Dramatic Dislocation: Near the climax of Manners & Mutiny, Sophronia's shoulder is pulled out of joint. They put it back in, but she has to finish the mission with one good arm.
• Dumbwaiter Ride: In Etiquette & Espionage, the 'incident' that gets Sophronia Temminnick sent to a finishing school by her mother involves her riding inside a dumbwaiter in an attempt to eavesdrop on a meeting between her molter and a very important guest. It ends with her lying on the floor in her petticoats with India rubber wrapped around her feet and most of a trifle atop the head of the unfortunate Mrs Barnaclegoose.
• Emergency Transformation: With vampires and werewolves integrated into society in this world, it's bound to happen eventually. Such as to Soap, when nearly killed in a fight. The nearby werewolf isn't incined to attempt changing a low-born, untrained boy into a werewolf, but Sophronia offers her services as a spy/assassin as soon as she finishes school in return.
• End of an Age: In the Grand Finale, after Geraldine's goes down in flames, the teachers admit that fewer and fewer girls have been applying and quietly disband the finishing school entirely. In addition, the Picklemen have been exposed and all mechanicals are destroyed.
• Fake Faint: Students of Mademoiselle Geraldine's are taught how to faint graciously, and the right times to do so.
• Faint in Shock: Dimity faints for real every time she sees blood.
• Fantastic Racism: The Bunson boys and graduates tend to really hate vampires and werewolves. But mostly vampires. One particular vampire becomes the victim of a hate crime.
• Female Fighter, Male Handler: Of a sort. The girls of Geraldine's are trained in spying, assassination, and all manner of intelligence work, while the boys of Bunson's learn how to be evil geniuses.
• Femme Fatale: Part and parcel of assassin training. The girls practice fainting, eyelash-fluttering, dropping gloves, and other flirting techniques to let down a man's guard.
• Fille Fatale: Preshea. She hasn't even finished puberty yet and she's already planning on murdering her first husband.
• Flirting Under Fire: Sophronia and Felix when the former is dealing with wannabe kidnappers.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • Those who've read The Parasol Protectorate and recognize the names of Sidheag and Captain Niall will not be surprised by the off-page events involving Lord Maccon that lead to their departure from the series in Waistcoats & Weaponry.
  • Tied in with Ludd Was Right, in The Parasol Protectorate, household mechanicals are nowhere to be seen, but in this prequel they're very common. So, why the change?
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the first book, when Professor Braithewope (a vampire) wants to know what Sophronia was thinking during their first class, she tells him she was wondering about him and his tether to the airship. She further muses out loud, wondering what would happen to him if he fell off the airship and outside the range of his tether and whether or not he will die. In book two, he DOES fall out of the airship from an extreme height, his tether snaps, and the combination of the fall and snap leaves him near-dead. Though he does survive, the snap left him completely insane, and he never recovers. And it's at least partially Sophronia's fault.
  • In book 3, Soap tells Sophronia he's thinking about becoming a claviger, and maybe being turned into a werewolf. At the end, he's subjected to an emergency transformation into such to save his life.
• Fur Against Fang: In the first book, there's a fight between the vampire Professor Braithwope and the werewolf Captain Niall. It's full moon, and Braithwope has to hold off the moonstruck Niall so that the students returning from seeing a play can get back onboard the school safely.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Vieve and her aunt. Most of the boys at Bunson's Polytechnic Institute.
• Girly Bruiser: Both Sophronia and Monique.
• Held Back in School: Monique steals a prototype during her final exam, which leads to her getting bumped all the way down from senior to debut.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the final book, Madame Spetuna is found out by the Picklemen, who are close to discovering Sophronia as well, so she detonates an explosive while still in the room.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: Captain Niall uses his top hat for this purpose at the climax of Waistcoats & Weaponry when he realizes Sophronia is present during a confrontation with Picklemen.
• Hidden Depths: All over the place, due to being set in an espionage school.
  • Mademoiselle Geraldine is in fact aware of the true nature of her school, and is just as capable as the other teachers.
  • Agatha is in service to Lord Akeldama, and has been since the beginning.
• I Can Change My Beloved: Lady Linette warns Sophronia that while seduction can lead a man away for a while, she can't fundamentally change another person's nature. Sophronia tries to do this to Felix and then Soap, before eventually coming to terms with the fact that she can't.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: The main reason of Felix, Lord Mersey's attraction to Sophronia. She is the only young lady that ignores and scorns him due to him being the heir to a duke.
• It's All About Me: Monique's Fatal Flaw as an intelligencer, which leads to her failing her final exam and eventually not graduating at all. She's competent enough at fooling others, but utterly terrible when someone uses those techniques on her.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: A significant amount of their training is teaching the girls how to operate while wearing the finest Victorian ball gowns, using extremely decorative and secretly bladed fans or tiny daggers and pistols.
• The Lad-ette: Sidheag likes fighting, especially dirty fighting, barely does her hair, is bored by femininine pursuits and even dresses in men's clothes on occasion. Several characters note that she's lucky she's a Lady and thus such eccentricities are tolerated, otherwise she'd have a much rougher time.
• Lady of War: What all the students aspire to become. Sidheag especially fits this trope, being a literal Lady and focusing more on the "war" aspect than the other girls, who tend towards covert operations.
• Lethal Letter Opener: One of the many concealed weapons Geraldine's girls are trained in, since it's a lot easier to explain why a Proper Lady is carrying a letter opener than a dagger.
• Little Miss Badass: Vieve is tricking mechanicals and breaking into places at nine years old.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Mademoiselle Geraldine has no idea that her own school is a training ground for spies and assassins, and keeping it that way is part of the curriculum. Except that Book 4 reveals that she was in on it the whole time, and is herself a fully capable intelligencer.
  • Part of testing "covert recruits" is to see how long it takes them to pick up on what sort of school they've joined. It took Sophronia less than a day.
• Ludd Was Right: The Picklemen plot involves reprogramming the bulk of Britain's mechanicals, causing them to turn against their masters. When the plot is thwarted, instead of coming up with proper safeguards the British just destroy all their mechanicals and refuse to use the technology, as the patents have become too politically charged to be given to any one side without the balance of power shifting. Vieve never forgives them for it.
• Mad Scientist: Bunson and Lacroix's Boys' Polytechnique, the sister (or perhaps brother?) school to Mademoiselle Geraldine's, trains boys to cause mayhem and create sinister gadgetry. The ranking system goes from Mildly Rude Genius to Evil Genius.
• Master Poisoner: Sister Mattie, who teaches the girls to be the same. She also teaches cooking and finances so that her girls know how to calculate the cost of poison and antidotes when preparing a dinner.
• The Millstone: Because she's Afraid of Blood, Dimity tends to faint in every action scene.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Dimity and Pillover are this, much to the disappointment of their evil parents. Dimity just wants to be a Proper Lady (with maybe a smidgen more training than she should have) and Pillover just wants to invent things.
• More Deadly Than the Male: The Mademoiselle Geraldine's girls are far more useful in a a conflict than the Bunson boys. The girls are specifically taught to finish just about anyone and anything.
• Mr. Fanservice: Captain Niall is almost always in some state of undress.
• Mundane Utility: The mechanimal Bumbersnoot, who can fly and be used to smuggle the occasional MacGuffin, also makes a lovely legwarmer.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Sophronia in Curtsies & Conspiracies. Vieve wants to go to Bunson's and convinces her to drive away a professor that might recognize her there. Sophronia chooses to make him think that Professor Braithewope is draining him in his sleep, to exploit his anti-vampire beliefs and provoke him into hysteria. In turn, the Professor sabotages Braithewope's aetherosphere suit, causes him to fall overboard and snap his tether, leaving him permanently insane. Sophronia is wracked with guilt afterward.
• No MacGuffin, No Winner: After four books of the supernatural community and the Picklemen fighting over mechanical technology, all mechanicals are outlawed and the patents move outside everyone's influence. The dewan is furious, but Sophronia sees the balance as necessary.
• The Nondescript: Agatha is normally a Shrinking Violet who'd rather fade into the background. Her training helps her weaponize it to become almost totally invisible. And of course, no one knew she was spying for Lord Akeldama.
• Non-Idle Rich: Many of the students are wealthy to various degrees, and they are all learning to become spies.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Mademoiselle Geraldine is not at all the oblivious woman she seems to be. Far from it.
• One-Gender Race: Vampires come close to this, as a male is far more likely to survive the change than a female. But since only females can become hive queens, it balances out. Werewolves come even closer, as barely one woman in a century survives metamorphosis.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Soap is shot and dying in Waistcoats & Weaponry, Dimity does not faint despite there being someone bleeding, noting that the situation is too serious for fainting.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Only the females, called vampire queens, can turn humans. And all vampires are bound by their tethers to their territories.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: All of them go batshit insane at full moon, and they are all required to serve in the military. And as with vampires, only an Alpha can create new werewolves.
• Perfect Poison: Foxglove seems to be in this universe, likely due to the lack of sufficient advancements in medicine.
• Prequel: To The Parasol Protectorate.
• Proper Lady: What Dimity and Agatha would rather be. Alas, family legacy demands otherwise. Sophronia's sisters and mother also qualify, on their better days, although they're often too stupid or frivolous to qualify.
• Properly Paranoid: What makes Sophronia such a magnificent intelligencer is that she sees a plot in everything and is relentlessly curious and suspicious, allowing her to ferret out conspiracies and secret tests. In the second book, she goes through a test including a tea party where she deduces that at least two of the pastries are poisoned, and then makes sure to only eat vegetables afterward in case luncheon is a follow-up test.
• Put on a Bus: In book 3, Sidheag and Niall leave because they have to manage the Kingair Pack. Soap, meanwhile, is grievously wounded in a fight, and Sophronia persuades the dewan to change him into a werewolf, so he has to go off to learn how to be one.
• Rewatch Bonus: The series reads very differently once you know that Mademoiselle Geraldine knows about the school's true nature and is a full intelligencer, and that Agatha has been an active agent in service to Lord Akeldama since before she arrived at the school.
• Samus Is a Girl: The little boy Vieve is revealed to be little girl Genevieve.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: While most of the girls are there because their patrons sponsor the school, Monique is the one who really tries to exploit it, stealing a prototype to try and blackmail the teachers into giving her better grades and repeatedly referring to her "special friend" to try and gain special privileges. The teachers eventually get sick of it and send her out to be married with no covert assignments, effectively failing her.
• Silk Hiding Steel: The girls are not just taught espionage and assassination, but etiquette and ladylike graces as well.
• Shear Menace: The girls are trained to use sewing scissors as a weapon, partly because they're innocuous and easily concealed.
• Shrinking Violet: Agatha, much to the consternation of her parents.
• Stern Teacher: Professor Lefoux.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Sidheag has very distinctive golden-yellow eyes, and is related to werewolves.
• Sweet Polly Oliver:
  • Vieve eventually gets herself into Bunson's, a boy's school for mad scientists, as "Gaston" Lefoux.
  • During the train business in Waistcoats & Weaponry, Sophronia, Dimity and Sidheag disguise themselves as boys. The latter is the most convincing at it.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: The sootie Soap, full name Phineas B. Crow. Lord Felix and Captain Niall.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Sidheag Maccon and Captain Niall, although mainly after they've both left Madame Geraldine's.
• Team Pet: The mechanimal Bumbersnoot. Not only cute, but he also is very useful to Sophronia.
• Teen Superspy: All of the girls are meant to be this, but Sophronia already is one, as she starts investigating everything practically the moment she arrives, loves gadgets, and solves plots on her own, all in her teenage years.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Sophronia and Dimity, but Sophronia has her girly side too. A better example would be Sidheag contrasted to all the other girls in her dormitory.
• Trash the Set: The finale of Manners & Mutiny has Sophronia and Monique destroying the school itself to stop the Picklemen from using it to take over England.
• Tsundere: Dimity toward Lord Dingleproops. Also Sophronia toward Lord Felix.
• Uptown Girl: Soap, aka Phineas B. Crow the sootie, has an intense attraction to Sophronia, who is the daughter of landed gentry. Even after Soap becomes a werewolf and gains social status, they acknowledge that their union will never be blessed by society. Luckily, they're fine with being lovers in the shadows.
• The Watson: Since Sophronia is a covert recruit who got into the school on merit as opposed to her parents, she's the one whom everything has to be explained to or who has to figure things out herself.
• When She Smiles: Sophronia has quite a lovely smile, and the narration notes that she underestimates its affect on the boys around her.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The afterword for Manners & Mutiny. The mechanical uprising led to the technology being banned and the patents passing out of everyone's hands. Bumbersnoot was given an exemption and declared Royal Alarm Dog to warn the Queen if they rise again. The teachers of the school all went on to new things, with Lady Linette going into theater, Mademoiselle Geraldine patronizing the education of underprivileged boys, Professor Braithwope becoming a hermit and local legend, and Sister Mattie going into herbalism. Vieve never forgave England and moved on to France to finish her education as Gaspar Lefoux. And Soap and Sophronia have decided to become lovers and spies in the dewan's service, with Sophronia going off to become Alexia's protector.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Monique has icy blonde hair and is quite selfish and ruthless.
• World of Action Girls: Mademoiselle Geraldine's seems to churn them out by the hundreds.
• Wrench Wench: Genevieve Lefoux, aged about 10 and going by Vieve. Also her aunt, Professor Lefoux.

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