He is supposed to be handsome, rich, brilliant with inventions and engines, slightly rude, and a bit of a rake.

Quensal Lefoux, the son of Angelique and the adopted son of inventor Madame Lefoux, is Rue's second companion. Prim Tunstall is a fluttery featherhead who thinks about nothing but fashion and manners and who forces Rue to leave for India early, lest Prim's mother, the former Ivy Hisselpenny, hear that she wore a walking dress instead of a carriage dress. Two of Rue's three companions also routinely get in the way of anything plot-related happening through sheer inanity. It's as if she were the love child of Veruca Salt and Renesmee Cullen. Then recall that she is spoiled, titled, rich, privileged and is quite literally the only one of her kind-a metanatural, the child of a werewolf and a soulless human. Add in the fact that she feels entitled to steal supernatural powers from werebeings and vampires any time she likes, whether she has permission or not.

She does not plan well, which I would think that a spy would have to do she treats most people who are not of her social class (i.e., almost everyone) with patronage and mild contempt she lacks her mother's practicality she is ignorant of almost everything except society and fashion, which made her extraordinarily boring and she is overwhelmingly arrogant, which she's aware of but for some strange reason regards as a virtue. She blunders from disaster to disaster, never understanding clearly what's going on around her and surrounded by political factions who are under the bizarre impression that when this blunt-spoken young twit says she doesn't understand something, she's being subtle. Unfortunately, Rue is not remotely prepared for her role as spy and never shows the slightest inclination to change. And, to be fair, a plotlet involving werebeings from India who want autonomy and who do NOT want to be allied with the British Crown, thanks ever so, does show up…eventually. This sounds so studiously innocuous that I was certain for most of the book that it was merely an inane cover story and that Prudence-pardon me, Rue-would deduce this at some point and then get involved in something dashing and adventurous and not remotely respectable. The premise is that Alexia's daughter, Prudence, is sent to India by Lord Akeldama, ostensibly to investigate some tea plants. This is definitely not the book I was expecting. I pre-ordered this book precisely because I loved Alexia's story so much and I couldn't wait to read more about her and her daughter being awesome together in steampunk supernatural London. I don't know when I've been so disappointed in a book.

Gail carriger custard protocol