Review: Competence

Competence by Gail Carriger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Third in the Custard Protocol series, Competence follows Primrose Tunstell as the crew of the Custard float into the New World with a Templar assassin in their guest bedroom, the ship's captain and engineer making doe eyes at each other, and a question about vampires.

I was excited to have Prim as the main character, I love a highly competent person, and I love cats (read the book, you'll see). Sadly I didn't feel like I got to see Prim shine as much as I had hoped. I understand the need for a character to noodle over fundamental truth about themselves, but I found that having her mother's reaction to said truths as being the big sticking point, to ring a bit hollow. Unless becoming a Hive Queen has drastically changed Ivy, I can't see her reacting as horribly to Prim's realizations as Prim thinks she will.
I would have liked a bit more adventuring, I mean, I haven't seen Victorian Peru much less Victorian South America at all and would have loved to see more of that and a bit less noodling.
I was also excited to see more of Percy, although I found it strange that at the start of the book almost every third thing he said was in Latin, but that he stopped fairly quickly and no one commented on it. Also, being very familiar with a number of non-neurotypical individuals, which I got the feeling Percy is supposed to be, some of the reactions of both he and the other characters had me giving a bit of a side-eye. With the amount of love that Carriger writes LBGTQ characters I found some of the reactions to Percy a bit jarring, I'm hoping that in the next book which is reportedly going to be about him that those reactions will be challenged. His POV and such got much better toward the end of the book, so hope springs eternal.

The humor, as always, was solid. There are some great ruminations on gender and sexuality with the added lenses of history and culture, which were great to read. I only wish there had been a bit more adventuring.

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