vampiresessah's Reviews (563)

There is something about the way that Gail Carriger portrays the characters and actions in her books that just enthralls me and makes it hard to not read through each of them in a single sitting. In the second installment of the Finishing School series, Sophronia is again caught between multiple problems at a time and trying to connect the dots to solve them. We get introduced to the old Alpha of the Woolsey pack and also met a few familiar vampires from the Parasol Protectorate series, including a short cameo of everyone’s favourite rove vampire Lord Akeldama himself. The vampire’s appearance is short but our adventurous heroine catches his interest immediately and opens the door to further contact and story development.
Just like with the first book I was quite sad when I realized that I had already reached the last ten pages of the novel. The story built up a bit too slowly and had so much momentum in the end that a few more chapters would’ve been quite a good addition to let everything cool down a bit.
My favourite bits are the appearances of the characters from Carriger’s previous series because they are such distinct characters that you recognize them even if they’re only briefly mentioned. Also the little hints that there might be some relationship between Sidhead and Captain Niall in the future installments thrilled me a lot. There is definitely a lot potential there for them.
Coming to a conclusion for this rather unstructured and chaotic review I want to recommend this book to everyone who likes to sit back and enjoy a silly book that has a very charming Victorian alternate universe with some steampunk flair and to those who like feisty heroines.

The HIVE series has a lot of elements that one might consider cliché in a villain/hero story like this. There are the types of villains that would fit right into a James Bond movie as well as an indestructible hero that survives. It might be bothering me a little bit that it’s always the very same five children who get in trouble (or sometimes it’s seven but Franz and Nigel are quite sidelined (again) in this book).
This novel granted us the reappearance of the earlier imprisoned Cypher, who is as psychopathic as ever and can be considered a wild card. His reintroduction was very fitting to the topic since it was once again a battle against Overlord (I can’t get around the fact that it’s the best possible and obvious choice of a name for the almighty entity). While I love the adults in the story I can’t warm up to most of the children. They just seem a little bit displaced and their appearance of the scene of events was too forced (This refers to the three girls rather than Otto or Wing). I wish that Walden would focus more on the classes at HIVE and how they actually develop to be those Evil Geniuses that they are supposed to become. Instead the story focuses too much on what the adults are doing.
Highlights of this installment are the reappearance of Cypher and also the beloved HIVEmind (which I have found myself missing a lot). Then there is of course the big change that Nero has taken over the leadership of GLOVE, which I hope will show us his not so kind side a bit more in the further books. After all this man is not just a nice supportive teacher but a true evil mastermind. We got to see a little glimpse of how capable he is of doing that job at the end of the book and I hope it’s expanded further, not just in the shapes of empty threats.
I admit that I’m a bit troubled with the general series because it seems more and more like the adults are taking over the storyline and not the children. Some of the themes especially the torture is a bit too vivid in my opinion when you consider that this book is meant for a younger audience. But it’s still a very fast and enjoyable read with many intriguing twists and a predictable, yet brilliant cliffhanger at the end.

So I finished The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. Lots of people seem to either love it or hate it but I think it’s somewhere in the middle of both. The book is written in a way that is easy to read and you identify with Mara’s point of view. I enjoyed the mystery of her powers and the death of her friends but at some points it was moving far too slow and was rather making me wonder if we would ever get to know a little more about what happened. While I like the character of Noah in general, I continuously rolled my eyes at their developing relationship and especially Mara’s reaction to him. I would’ve like if the romance had taken a secondary position as opposed to Mara’s slow decent into insanity.
All in all I enjoyed reading the book though, its atmosphere and that you were continuously wondering what was really happening and what was purely a hallucination. The twist on the last pages also made me consider following this series, because I would really like to see where this will all end.