Literature / The Custard Protocol

The Custard Protocol is a series of books by Gail Carriger and a sequel spinoff of The Parasol Protectorate centered around the grown-up children of the main series. Set in The Gay '90s in the Gaslamp Urban Fantasy world of the Protectorate, the now twenty-year-old Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama (real name Rue), is growing tired of high society. Her adoptive father Lord Akeldama gifts her a top of the line dirigible (which she christens "The Spotted Custard") and a mission to India to oversee his tea plantations there. Accompanied by her best friend Primrose Tunstell, her best friend's reticent brother Percival, and her frenemy Quensel Lefoux, Prudence and her friends will travel across the British Empire, finding adventure and uncovering secrets that might shake the supernatural community to its core.

The series is complete and has four books.

Novels

1. Prudence
2. Imprudence
3. Competence
4. Reticence

The books show examples of:

• Abandon Ship: Near the end of Reticence, Lady Sakura has been retrieved, and Edo is drifting away. Because the women of Edo were only there to care for her, they leap off and parachute to Tokyo en masse.
• All Lesbians Want Kids: A variation. Primrose desperately wants children but is convinced she can only have them biologically, since no one will allow two women to adopt children. It's resolved when Rue and Quesnel have an accidental child, and she realizes she can be a mother to that child.
• Armored Closet Gay: Primrose slowly moves from being unaware of her feelings for Tasherit to being in active and deliberate denial, at one point complaining that self-delusion is difficult when repressing thoughts of her.
• Asian Fox Spirit: Reticence introduces kitsune. They have more distinctly "magical" abilities than other werebeasts, such as a form of mesmerism and illusion that befuddles their targets, and are tied to an Alpha. The Alpha gets sick if she's kept from them too long, while her pack becomes more conniving, treacherous, and prone to meddling without her, leading them to cause political chaos and stir up xenophobia in Japan. There's also a character who is a huli jing, a Chinese werefox, just passing through.
• Asians Love Tea: Being consummate examples of Brits Love Tea themselves, the protagonists comment on and approve of Asian tea cultures. While most Asian cultures get some mention, the tea cultures of India and Japan are actual plot points.
  • The varanas of India revere tea as sacred, and Rue winds up giving them her father's tea plantations as part of the treaty.
  • They're pleased to note that the Japanese might be the only people who take tea as seriously as the British do. Rue instigates a fight by dunking a cookie into her tea.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy:
  • Lord Akeldama is quite casually revealed to be Alexander the Great.
  • He, Tasherit, and a third preternatural were in a three-way relationship that resulted in the birth of Zenobia, the first metanatural.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Rue makes note of her roundness and her generous curves several times, and many men, including her love interest Quesnel, find her absolutely stunning.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: It's implied in Imprudence, then confirmed in Competence that Percy's Insufferable Genius ways are because he's always felt confused and rejected by people so he decided to reject them first by pretending it was due to his greater intellect.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: As seen in Take That!, Prudence takes a moment to mention how silly she thinks hats with gears on them are. The cover art for the first two books depicts her wearing one.
• Break the Haughty: Imprudence provides a devastating blow to Percy's Insufferable Genius ego. In an attempt to get back at Quesnel for publishing about the weremonkeys before he could, Percy publishes a paper about Tasherit, revealing the existence of werelions to the world without her consent. Tasherit then reveals that she is not the last of her kind and because werelions are not legally people yet, the Empire will have free reign to exploit, enslave, or even hunt her kind to extinction. Needless to say, Percy is wracked with guilt over his own presumption.
• Cool Airship: The Spotted Custard, a cutting-edge dirigible for traveling in comfort and safety. Rue had her painted like a ladybug, providing the "spotted" part of her name, and Akeldama made sure she'd be beautiful as well as practical and combat ready.
• Costume Porn: Every single outfit is lovingly described. Every. Single. One. And custom dictates that the ladies have an outfit for every occasion from traveling to sport to greeting to semi formal to formal, so they change clothes often.
• Covers Always Lie: Downplayed, but the portrait used for Rue in the first two books is pale with a slender figure, while Rue is described as round and noticeably tanner than her companions. She also wears a hat with gears, which Rue is mentioned to dislike.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Rue was raised with an open mind about the matter and found she preferred gentlemen, but even she admits that Tasherit is the most beautiful woman she knows.
• Everyone Can See It:
  • When Rue finally realizes that Quesnel has feelings for her, Prim dryly informs her that the rest of the ship has had a pool going for a while.
  • By the end of Imprudence Prim and Tasherit's attraction is obvious to everyone onboard the ship.
• Everyone Looks Sexier if French: Quesnel is French and quite the flirt. Which bites him in the ass when he gets involved with Rue, as she doesn't realize he's in love with her.
• Fake Town: Downplayed with Edo. It is a functioning city, but Percy and Arsenic realize there are too few people and too precise architecture for it to be organically created and conclude that it's a planned town populated by diplomats and created to impress foreigners.
• Family of Choice:
  • After she reaches her majority and loses the pack, Rue notes with grief that she feels unmoored and lost before she accepts The Spotted Custard as her family.
  • Prim goes through the same revelation in Competence, which gives her the courage to admit her feelings for Tasherit.
• Floating Continent: Edo, also known as the Paper City, which floats above Tokyo thanks to an intricate system of immense balloons. It's also the only part of Japan that foreigners are allowed to visit, and how it stays still despite a lack of anchor is a zealously guarded secret. Parachutes tied into obis are a necessary part of their attire, which saves Percy's and Arsenic's lives when Lord Ryuunosoke shoves him overboard.
• Fur Against Fang: In contrast to England and most of Europe, the Rakshasas and Varanas of India are bitter rivals and believe they have a divine mandate to fight. This caused a major diplomatic blunder when England reached out to the Rakshasas first, leading the Varanas to refuse further diplomatic ties.
• Geeky Turn-On: After three books of ignoring any and all female attention, Percy meets female doctor and intellectual Arsenic Ruthven and falls hard. They like speaking Latin and reading together.
• Going Commando: Rue starts to go without her underthings due to the need to transform at any time. This is even more problematic considering underthings in the Victorian era were a full outfit with multiple layers, so people are often scandalized by seeing the outline of her legs under her skirt.
• Growing Up Sucks: Rue attains her majority in Imprudence. She has to say good-bye to her pack and to Lord Akeldama, her parents relocate to Egypt to avoid Alpha's Curse driving her father mad (at the cost of making him mortal), and she struggles with losing her family as she grows up. There's also the fact that her legal protections have ended, and thus the many people who want her dead can start the hunt in earnest.
• Happily Adopted: While Rue acknowledges her parents, she is closest to Lord Akeldama and considers him her "real" parent because he was there for her when she was growing up.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: In the second book, Prim keeps getting engaged to different men and then breaking it off, all while making clear that her heart's not truly in it but she feels she must be married because it's what's expected of a Proper Lady. Rue, who grew up with Lord Akeldama, and Tasherit, the woman flirting with her, catch on before she does.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Percy considers himself one, since he doesn't like anyone, so he defers the matter to his valet Virgil and his cat Footnote.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Rue brokers peace with the Varanas by offering them a treaty with the Shadow Council rather than Britain, as they refuse to be part of a treaty that includes their historical enemies the Rakshasas, and by offering them Lord Akeldama's tea plantations as a gesture of good faith. She gets in a lot of trouble for it among the major powers of England, but she maintains that it was necessary to save lives.
• Inconvenient Attraction: Primrose is very dedicated to becoming a Proper Lady, including a husband and children, so she absolutely refuses to acknowledge her growing feelings for Tasherit. It gets to the point where even Percy calls her on it.
• Insufferable Genius: Percy's defining character trait, along with No Social Skills. He's the most educated person on the airship and often bemoans being surrounded by "lesser intellects", while showing off his own scientific mind at every opportunity.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Primrose, a human, and Tasherit, a werelioness. Primrose worries about the implications of her long life, but Tasherit has had mortal lovers before and has made her peace with it.
  • Lady Sakura, a werefox, and Lord Ryuunosuke, a weredragon, are the first notable couple where both are supernatural. Percy considers writing a paper on it.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Queen Victoria is right when she says that Rue should not have negotiated a treaty with a foreign power without official Crown approval, but rather undermines her own point by being incredibly racist about it and making clear she cares less about the lives Rue saved and more about her own political power.
• Kid Hero All Grown-Up: Reticence has several characters from The Finishing School Series cameo nearly 45 years after their series to send Percival on a mission to retrieve one of their agents. Lord Akeldama mentions in the epilogue that he considers their generation, and Sophronia in particular, to be the first Worthy Opponents he's had in centuries.
• Last Episode, New Character: Arsenic Ruthven joins the group in Reticence and shares the point of view with Percy.
• Like Mother, Unlike Daughter: Rue is far more fun-loving and carefree than Alexia, Primrose is as practical as her mother Ivy is frivolous, and Arsenic is a doctor who's deeply ashamed of her mother's past as an assassin.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Prim is a Proper Lady obsessed with fashion, propriety, shopping, and all manner of beautiful things, and she has some trouble admitting that she likes women. This is in contrast to Tasherit, who is openly bisexual and freely borrows from any gender or culture.
• Love Epiphany: Downplayed. Rue starts feeling love for Quesnel early in Imprudence, but remains deeply in denial of it, afraid he'll break her heart or that he doesn't love her back. It takes him being seriously wounded for her to admit it to herself and to him.
• Love Redeems: It's mentioned that there are several ways to make a soulless preternatural turn good, but one of the most reliable is love. Sure enough, the catalyst for Rodrigo Tabarotti's Heel–Face Turn is his love for Anitra.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Being thousands of years old, Tasherit has outlived many mortal lovers, and is ready to start again with Primrose. When she and Lord Akeldama meet up, they fondly reminisce about a man they both loved and the daughter born of their triad.
• Measuring the Marigolds: Percy likes to study everything and sees the world through a scientific lens, something that annoys Rue and Prim since he ruins them gazing at anything beautiful. Part of the reason he and Arsenic click is that she understands that he finds understanding something to contribute to its beauty.
• The Nondescript: The "Wallflower", a spy so good at this she's managed to hide in Japan. Turns out she's none other than Agatha Woosnoss.
• Non-Lethal Warfare: The climax of Prudence involves the Varanas vs the English military with no casualties. Justified: the Varanas are immune to the weapons the English are carrying, and they really do not want to be the party that escalates so they avoid killing until the Spotted Custard and her allies are able to negotiate a ceasefire.
• No Social Skills: Percy makes a social gaffe practically once a chapter. Earlier books indicate that he's simply a Jerkass, but chapters from his point of view reveal that while he is haughty, he's often genuinely unaware that his words could be hurtful.
• Oblivious to Love: Quesnel is quite obviously in love with Rue from the moment he appears, and implicitly long before that. It takes her two books to catch up.
• Of Corset Hurts: Downplayed in that they don't hurt, but are restrictive. Rue starts to go without corsets or stays due to the need to transform at any time, and Primrose envies her freedom of movement.
• Our Vampires Are Different:
  • Rue meets a few Rakshasas in India, who are related to European vampires but look distinctly different (fangs longer and more to the front, sunken in eyes, a persistent smell of carrion).
  • Peru has the pishtacos, vampires that suck fat instead of blood, have columnar teeth, and are unnaturally pale and emaciated. There's also only six left in the world due to persecution. Percy gets the idea to send them to California, where they can start up a business in Los Angeles sucking fat from customers.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: Rue grew up thinking that werewolves were the only type of shapeshifter, but her travels show her that there are many the world over, all with unique forms and similar but distinct rules.
  • India has the Varanas, a people of weremonkeys who are worshipped by the local population, revere tea, and have a long standing rivalry with the Rakshasas.
  • Tasherit the werelioness meets the group and agrees to travel with them. Unlike werewolves, she can go into the aether, but falls asleep during it.
  • The pishtacos of Peru mention that werejaguars and werepumas used to exist, but were wiped out.
  • Japan introduces werefoxes, who are abnormally light and small and have a form of mesmerism. Japanese kitsune are tied to their clans (and having an alpha away from her clan for too long will make both sick), while Chinese huli jing are independent. There's also weredragons, who can mate with werefoxes and control water.
• Parasol of Pain: Alexia gifts Rue one of her parasols when she goes to India, although not the parasol. She earns it on the trip to Egypt when she joins the Parasol Protectorate, and Prim has one made for her too.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: In Reticence, it's eventually revealed that the floating city Edo is powered by two of them: Lord Ryuunosuke, whose draconic abilities keep the plumbing going, and Lady Sakura, whose ties to her kitsune pack keeps the city anchored. Unfortunately, Lady Sakura is sickening from the prolonged isolation, and by the end both of them leave Edo to fly off.
• Power Parasite: Rue has the ability to steal the abilities of supernaturals by touch, although if she goes out of range the link severs.
• Practice Kiss: Rue has one with Quesnel, because she doesn't want to embarrass herself when she takes a lover. It's fairly clear that she just doesn't want to admit her attraction to him. In Imprudence, it goes quite a bit farther that that.
• Pregnant Badass: Rue is pregnant throughout most of Reticence, which limits her shifting abilities, but nonetheless stays in the action right up until the day she gives birth.
• Racial Remnant: Thanks to supernatural persecution and shifting attitudes across the world, many races of supernatural are not what they once were.
  • The werelions were once gods to the Egyptians, but this later turned to deep hatred and the creation of the God Breaker Plague. Now, they are reduced to a single pride living on a false island in Lake Victoria.
  • The pishtacos were never fully accepted by Andean cultures, but once the conquistadors arrived with the Inquisition they were almost completely eradicated. When the Spotted Custard catches up to them, there's only six left, most of whom are the last survivors of eradicated hives.
• Refuge in Audacity: With a twinge of I Am Spartacus. When Madame Lefoux dances with Miss Imogene at Rue and Quesnel's wedding, the people around try to shame them. Then Lord Falmouth takes his Beta out to the floor, Lady Kingair takes Aggie Phinkerlington, and it dominoes into nearly half the party dancing with someone of the same gender.
  Primrose: What if Mother finds out about this?
  Percy: Wasn't that the point? We can't all of us be accused of deviant behavior all at once.
• Running Gag:
  • The Spotted Custard trying to puff and making farting noises.
  • Percy trying to escape from wearing a hat.
  • Percy wanting to write a paper on everything.
  • Tea being Serious Business.
• Running Gagged: From The Parasol Protectorate, Captain Featherstonehaugh has finally gotten married.
• Secret Test of Character: When interviewing doctors for the Custard, Rue rigs the sugar pot to explode to see how they react to it. Arsenic gets the job when she just laughs and checks for injuries.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Established in the second book, where Percy's experiences with the weremonkeys and werelions lead him to conclude this. Tasherit is noted to be a lot heavier in her human form than she should be, and the same applies to werewolves. It's why Percy waves off rumors of weregoats and werefoxes, since they're too small to fit a human form. On the flip side, kitsune are barely bigger than children and far lighter than they should be in their human form.
• Skewed Priorities: Prim is so obsessed with the many nuances of high society that she neglects the bigger picture. In the first book, she accidentally wears a traveling dress while visiting and is so upset by the faux pas that she decides to flee to India with Rue in shame. In so doing, she ruins the going-away party that everyone's parents had put together, which was all set to be the event of the season and causes quite the scandal.
• Spin-Offspring: All four of the protagonists are direct or indirect offspring of the main characters in Parasol Protectorate. Rue is the daughter of Alexia and Connell Maccon and adoptive child of Lord Akeldama, Primrose and Percival are the children of Ivy and Ormond Tunstell, and Quesnel Lefoux is the son of Angelique and adopted son of Madame Lefoux. Reticence also has Arsenic Ruthven, the daughter of Preshea Buss from The Finishing School Series.
• Spirited Young Lady: Rue takes after her mother, and starts the series stealing a valuable snuffbox for her Dama and then making a getaway as a werewolf. Her parents sent her off to India because they knew she'd eventually get in trouble, they just wanted to ensure she got into trouble in a controlled environment.
• Sweet Tooth: Rue's favorite food is custard, she calms down by thinking of pastries, she's always up for candy, and she considers Quesnel's dislike for sweets to be a terrible character flaw.
• Take That!: When she's putting together the worst outfit she can think of for a plan, Rue comes across a hat with gears sewn on it from a "blessed brief" fashion trend three seasons ago. Hats with random gears sewn on them for no discernible reason are a staple of steampunk art.
• Team Pet: Percy's cat Footnote, since Percy wouldn't leave without him. He mostly provides cuddles and moral support, but he did prove useful in Imprudence, as the Drifters took his black and white markings as a good omen.
• That's No Moon: The werecat colony in Lake Victoria is disguised as an island from above. The Custard has to get close before they can see the small stories of reeds. And that's before it's revealed that the whole colony is actually a massive airship.
• The Talk: Alexia gives a very frank one to Rue about the use of contraceptives, which mortifies Rue so much she blanks it from her memory. She probably shouldn't have, since she ends up accidentally pregnant at the end of Competence.
• Title Drop: In Reticence, Rue refers to discovering new supernatural species as "the Custard's protocol".
• Trans Tribulations: Anitra is a trans woman, which is accepted in her culture but not in many others, so she's surprised that Rodrigo would accept her as a wife and is keen to hide this from the rest of the crew. She eventually comes out to Primrose, who figures that between the soulless and Rue, the idea of a female soul in a male body doesn't sound that implausible.
• Uniqueness Value: Rue is the first and only confirmed metanatural, a status that brings curiosity and contempt.
• Unwanted Harem: The ladies interested in marrying Percy, or LIMPs as he calls them. No matter where he goes, Percy gets a flock of young women interested in him and he absolutely loathes it.
• Unwanted Rescue: Rue, Percy, and Mrs. Featherstonehaugh are all negotiating with the Varanas and starting to work things out. Then the Spotted Custard arrives, shortly followed by the British military, which torpedoes the negotiations and requires some quick thinking on Rue's part to avoid a complete bloodbath.
• Vehicle Title: The series is named after the Spotted Custard, the dirigible the main characters use.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Both Tunstell siblings feel the need to be serious and grounded to contrast their mother Ivy, with Primrose focusing on high society while Percy focuses on academic pursuits.
• Wandering Culture: The Drifters, an offshoot of the Bedouin who have taken to living in airships. A group of them help the Custard crew escape pursuers in Imprudence, and take in the werelions at the end.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: As the series deals with the outskirts of the British Empire, new species of supernatural are discovered and have to be quickly given legal personhood to avoid exploitation or even genocide. In Imprudence, Rue reveals that due to her status as a metanatural, she is only a person in some senses of the law, while in all others, she's considered a "national asset" instead. Which is why attaining her majority was so devastating: as she's attained her majority, left the pack, and lost favor with Queen Victoria, there are little to no legal protections for her and many people are trying to hunt her down.
• White Man's Burden: This being the Victorian era, Percy expresses the opinion that England is bringing civilization and progress to the places it colonizes, using the anti-supernatural discrimination laws that Britain imposes on India (which is prejudiced against Rakshasas) as proof. Imprudence proves to be a wake-up call for him, due to the Break the Haughty moment above, and realizing that England isn't actually as progressive as he thought.
  Tasherit: You really thought you were a civilizing force? Have you not read enough books to know that's the song all conquerors sing?
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Preshea Buss is an infamous Black Widow and assassin who has killed three husbands and thus finds it delightfully ironic to name her daughters after poisons. At least one is named the (somewhat) acceptable Belladonna, but the last in line got stuck with Arsenic.
• Women's Mysteries: The Japanese authorities are none too eager to see a female doctor like Arsenic, but accept her because their Lady Sakura has been having problems and they think it might be a "female complaint". It's not. That's just the excuse she and her handmaidens used to get to Arsenic so she could escape.
• Word Salad Title: Not the series itself, but the Spotted Custard. Rue named it because it was spotted and because she loves custard, and other characters are often baffled by its name. Quesnel immediately gets on her bad side when he says it sounds like a euphemism for venereal disease.
• World of Action Girls: While Percy and Quesnel can fight if pressed, they prefer to stay back while Rue, Tasherit, Primrose, Spoo, Aggie, and Arsenic take point. Percy even lampshades at one point that for all of his society's protests on proper ladylike behavior, he's gotten used to every woman around him being combat ready.
• Wrench Wench: Aggie Phinkerlington, the Custard's chief greaser, second in command to Quesnel, and all around grouch. She is very good at her job, or else Rue might have let her go for her personality.