The Proper Choice

This month I decided to read the first book in both of Gail Carriger's series.

Finishing School - Etiquette and Espionage
The Parasol Protectorate - Soulless


At first I wanted to read Soulless first only because I have owned it for so long, but then I heard everyone comparing the two novels. Overall what I got was that E&E was poor in comparison to Soulless. Surely it was just the jump from Adult fiction to YA that caused the change in style, but either way hearing this changed my decision. Maybe I am just weird that I did not want to read the better of the two novels first, I don't know what other people would have done honestly.

Here was my thought process: If I read the weaker of the two novels first, it might not seem so bad. If the novel was a strong novel on it's own, but only weaker in comparison to Soulless, then I would be satisfied with it. Having not read Soulless yet, I would have nothing to compare the novel to. If the novel were in fact a weak novel all on it's own then I would have the stronger novel to look forward to. I would just have to make my way through E&E to get to the novel everyone enjoyed.

I think I was right to make this choice. E&E was not poorly written by any means, it was just slow. The story was there even if it did drag at the beginning and go too quickly at the end. I will be picking up the second one when it is released, but I was definitely glad to get to Soulless. Now I am only about a third of the way through Soulless, so I can't say much just yet. So far though I am much more satisfied with this novel, just as everyone said. I will wait to see how it finishes out before I make my final judgement though.