Waiting on Wednesday: Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger

Waiting on Wednesday recognizes that we as bookies pine for books. This post is about what I am impatiently waiting for right now. It was started by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

I have been trying to read the Parasol Protectorate series for a few years now. Every time I pick it up though, it's just not the right time to read it. Since I've heard nothing but good things about it, I don't want to ruin the chance of a great series by not being in the right mind frame for it. Enter Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1) by Gail Carriger due out February 5, 2013. I think this may be the perfect way to prepare myself to read the original series. This book series is based in the same world as the Parasol Protectorate, so I'm hoping it will put me in the right frame of mind so that I can finally read what I hear is such an incredible series.

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to finishing school.

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is the bane of her mother's existence. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper etiquette at tea--and god forbid anyone see her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. She enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But little do Sophronia or her mother know that this is a school where ingenious young girls learn to finish, all right--but it's a different kind of finishing. Mademoiselle Geraldine's certainly trains young ladies in the finer arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also in the other kinds of finishing: the fine arts of death, diversion, deceit, espionage, and the modern weaponries. Sophronia and her friends are going to have a rousing first year at school.
First in a four book YA series set 25 years before the Parasol Protectorate but in the same universe.

From Goodreads

This book seems to mix the best of the Hex Hall series with the lively world of the Parasol Protectorate. Victorian England was such a fascinating time and this will be no exception.

Anyone heard anything good about this one? Who else is looking forward to reading it?