Etiquette & Espionage - Initial Thoughts

I have a big bone to pick with the bus driver who drove the second leg of my trip in to work tonight : he didn't have the heat turned on so it was too cold to read. It wouldn't be such a huge offense some nights, but I'm reading Gail Carriger's Etiquette & Espionage and the main character, 14-year-old Sophronia is just beginning to understand that the "finishing school" she has been suddenly enrolled in isn't your normal type of finishing school.

• It flies. Like, in the air flies.
• She's delivered to the school on the back of a werewolf.
• There are mechanical maids like Rosie from The Jetsons -- but in the 1850's. (She has a mechanical butler at home so that part isn't so strange. I suppose.)
• Her flying school gets attacked by flying bandits (and, as a result, she ends up with a mechanical dog).
• One of her new teachers is a vampire.

I've never ventured into the whole "steam punk" thing until now aside from oohing and aahing over different cosplay pictures online, but so far I'm loving it!

Sophronia is a spitfire. It's probably why her family was so eager to send her to finishing school -- to break her of it. However, it also seems to be why the school was so eager to take her -- to cultivate it. I'm all for the cultivation of spitfire in girls.

I'm currently only a third of the way through -- Chapter 8 : "The Teaching Habits of Werewolves."  I'm already recommending it to friends and I'm extremely glad that it was recommended to me!

Now, I'm going to do a little bit of work (I know, right? Actually working while at work? Crazy.) THEN I'm going to get back to reading ....