Redheaded Reviews: Venturess by Betsy Cornwall

In the previous book, Nicolette Lampton grew up with a mother who was an inventor and a father who sold her inventions. Then her mother died of the fairy croup because her father refused to try to get the medicine which was illegal because it was magic medicine and the king's wife had died from taking too much of the medicine and therefore the king banned both fairy medicine and faeries. His eldest son was assassinated and therefore his youngest son was placed under lock and key. She met Fin and Caro at the Market in downtown Esting when she went there to sell her inventions that she made when on her sixteenth birthday she received a key to her mother's lab. Unfortunately when the king banned half-fey their housekeeper Mr. Candery, who had been a big help to her left to go back to Faerie. There was an Exhibition for Scientists and Inventors and a ball and she went to both and was successful in getting a backer for her inventions with Lord Alming and danced with a Prince who turned out to be Fin the young boy she had fallen in love with but couldn't marry because it would fit too many bad people's plans. Besides Caro loved him too. But Caro also loved Bex, the young stable girl. And Caro also loved Nick who loved Caro too. Nick, Caro, and Fin, formed a family. Fin's father was becoming frailer and listening to the religious extremists, the Brethren, and planning on going to war with Faerie.

In this book, Esting is at war with Faerie and it's not going well for Faerie. Fin is giving speeches constantly in support of Faerie, but it doesn't seem to be doing any good. Then one day he gives a speech at the Exposition and is shot in the shoulder and taken away. Then Lord Fitz, a man who is evil and once interested in Nick, takes an automaton he has created and places it on the stage Fin had been using and mimics Fin's voice behind a curtain and uses the machine to pretend to be Fin speaking that he agrees with his father about the necessity of the war and how the fey are evil. Nick goes up there to see what's going on and finds out what he's up to. She had announced that she was Fin's fiance and the Heiress in front of a live mic in order to go with the doctors and be with him. Now Fitz is using this to solidify his position with the Heiress endorsing his position.

Nick goes looking around the castle and finds Fitz's collection of about a thousand half made automatons. One looks just like her. She destroys it and many others. She tells Fin and Caro about them and about the letter she received from Mr. Candery asking Fin to come and make peace with Faerie. So they decide to head out to Faerie on an airship. Captain Wheelock, a young captain, takes them across the ocean where they get to go down into the ocean in glass-enclosed boats and Fin sees a merman caught in their nets and he breaks the glass open in order to free the merman. But he makes Wheelock promise to never reveal what he saw because he is worried that his father will want to conquer the sea folk as well and he wished to protect them.

While in Faerie Nick will not only face her past and her mostly anger and some happiness over it but also the consequences of the actions she's taken over the years that have had great ramifications for those she loves. Fin will try to prevent a war by creating a peace treaty and Caro will learn the arts of healing. The three will never be the same again after this trip. This book is a worthy sequel to Mechanica and teaches us that there is more than one kind of family. I loved this amazing book and give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

But you must admit, its much easier for someone to be good once they’re dead.

-Betsy Cromwell (Ventress p 69)

The ocean was its own continent, dark as the forest above it, charming and roiling white froth in that it seemed as if at any moment it might swallow the cliffs. Yet it was seductive, too, in the way it rolled and becxkoned and sang, waves stroking the edge of the land like lovers. Infinitely fierce and infinietely gentle, like every lover I’d ever known.

-Betsty Cornwall (Ventress p 102)

One must always account for the vagaries of truth, Mother used to always say.

-Betsy Cornwall (Ventress p 176)

I was too tired to be anything but docile, and that was what frightened me the most.

-Betsty Cornwall (Ventress p 189)