Defy or Defend

A Delightfully Deadly Novel

By: Gail Carriger

Narrated by: Emma Newman

New York Times best-selling author Gail Carriger brings you a charming story of love, espionage, and Gothic makeovers set in her popular Parasolverse.

Narrated by the wonderful Emma Newman.

Spy...

Dimity Plumleigh-Teignmott, code name Honey Bee, is the War Office's best and most decorative fixer. She's sweet and chipper, but oddly stealthy, and surprisingly effective given the right incentives.

Versus knight...

Sir Crispin Bontwee was knighted for his military service, but instead of retiring, he secretly went to work for the War Office. Mostly he enjoys his job, except when he must safeguard the Honey Bee. Neither of them are vampire experts, but when Nottingham Hive goes badly Goth, only Dimity can stop their darkness from turning bloody. And only Crispin can stop an enthusiastic Dimity from death by vampire.

In a battle for survival (and wallpaper), Dimity must learn that not all that sparkles is good, while Cris discovers he likes honey a lot more than he thought.

Spinning off from the Finishing School series, featuring deadly ladies of quality, this story stands alone but chronologically follows Poison or Protect. It's Cold Comfort Farm meets Queer Eye meets What We Do In the Shadows from the author of the Parasol Protectorate books, perfect for fans of Julia Quinn, Jodi Taylor, or Meljean Brook.

Delicate sensibilities? Contains fraternizing vampires and one very curious young lady, who asks about it, sometimes in detail, but mostly in retrospect. May also involve excessive use of velvet, melodramatic poetry, and the strategic application of interpretive ballet.

©2020 Gail Carriger LLC (P)2020 Gail Carriger LLC

This was fun, if a bit silly

I loved watching Dimity flourish in her role as “Honey Bee”, the elite espionage agent, in the ways that only she could: with ruffles and sparkles! In the Finishing School books she mostly came across as a bit of a ditz, but it’s clear that there’s hidden depths to her character. The way she swooped in and completely remade the vampire hive was loads of fun to watch, even if it was more than a bit of a stretch to get it done in that timeframe, and to have everyone be so easily manipulated. But it was still fun! The vampires “going goth” were hilarious!!

The romance was sweet, but didn’t really connect with me. I’m very glad they did eventually get together after what was apparently years of pining in secret! As I said, sweet, but somehow didn’t feel quite as romantic as other relationships written by this author.

Overall, this was enjoyable, but I’m not sure it will be one I regularly revisit. Not that it was bad, mind you, just not as great as her other books, imo. Maybe when I’m in the mood for some silliness!

Delightful indeed!

The first Carriger books I actually read were the Finishing School series, and Dimity was my favorite character, so I was very excited to see that hers was the second Delightfully Deadly novella! And it really is as delightful as I would expect from a novella with Dimity as the heroine! It's nice to see her as an adult and how she's grown and changed, and stayed the same as well. I also adore her moniker- it suits her so well! Crispin is very sweet and so very repressed, and I for one spent the novel supporting Dimity's determination to climb him like a tree.
I also really loved the way Justice was handled as a character, and of course seeing little cameos of Lord Maccon and Pillover, and mentions of Sophronia and Soap, Sidheag, and Agatha!
The narrator did very well, but sometimes her voice changes were a little subtle for me to catch which character was speaking, and there were a few places where she said the wrong character's name in a scene or seemed to stumble over a word, but nothing major and it didn't really pull me out of the story.

so much fun!

I love getting a chance to find out what happened to all of the Finishing School characters. As Gail says, it's always fun to spot characters from other stories in the background. It's a wonderful universe she has made, and I enjoy spending time in it.

Good communication between the lead characters.

I love when the love match is communicating with each other. There's still drama, I do hate when people don't speak frankly.

so enjoy these characters

great fun. enjoyed the storyline and characters ....happy to know Dimity found her knight, but was able to use her"Intelligencer" skills