There may be a lioness around with a taste for parasols.” “Yes, Lady Captain.” And went to round up the necessary decklings to assist her in this task. “I think, my dear Spoo, you might activate the gangplank drawback mechanism. She is unabashed in making this book exactly what she wanted it to be, and I applaud that success.

I think Carriger has built a fascinating and original world for her stories, her characters are enjoyable and likable, and she can certainly turn a clever phrase. I haven’t read those books, but I imagine they are similarly entertaining and lighthearted distractions with a propensity for admiring their own admittedly pleasing cravats and tea kettles just a bit too proudly. This all sounds like I didn’t like Prudence, and that isn’t the case. But what you’re getting into is something pretty specific and potentially cloying.Ĭarriger already has a devoted following for her Parasol Protectorate series, which is set in the same world as Prudence and features Rue’s mother, Alexia. If you know what you’re getting into with this book, it’s a fun diversion. Rue and her friends, Primrose, Quesnel, and Percy, get into silly arguments, prize tea above all else, are always impeccably dressed, and observe the myriad minutiae of polite manners and customs of the British empire of old, despite holding social congress with vampires and werebeasts of various persuasions and floating in a zeppelin painted like a ladybug. The tone of the book is intentionally and unapologetically twee, so if twee is not your thing, steer clear. Her irascible group of friends accompany her, and various daring, cute, unlikely, and occasionally naked hijinks ensue. She is gifted a dirigible by said vampire, christens it The Spotted Custard, and is sent on a mission to India to abscond with a very valuable new strain of tea plants. She is the child of werewolves and the adopted daughter of a powerful (and fabulously gay) vampire. She is the only one in the known world, and thereby adored and hated with equal measure by various groups and individuals.

The main character is Lady Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama (Rue for short), a “metanatural,” a human who can steal the form and abilities of a vampire or werewolf merely by touching the unfortunate being. The first book in her new Custard Protocol series, Prudence is set in a steampunk Victorian England in which travel is accomplished by dirigible and vampires and werewolves form powerful sects within Britain’s upper crust. If you crossed a Jane Austen novel with a Stephen King novel and cast Zooey Deschanel in the movie adaptation, you’d be close to imagining Gail Carriger‘s newest book Prudence.

Gail carriger custard protocol