As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

As soon as I finished this, I downloaded the next book (which is book 7.5) in the NLB overdrive app! (Spoiler alert: the short story is too short, you can skip it) In As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, Flavia is taken away from her home and sent to Canada, to the school where her mother used to study. Luckily for Flavia, she finds a corpse almost immediately, and between the murder and the mysterious organisation she’s now part of, Flavia has a lot to distract her.

While I’ve always found Flavia charming, this is the first book where I found her a little twee. Perhaps it’s the journey to Canada, but she was a little annoying in the first few chapters. Luckily, she firmed up when she found the body and returned to being the Flavia I’d come to know and love.

I still have absolutely no idea what this secret organisation stuff is about, though. I do remember reading about it in the last book, but not that much has been revealed, even though there have been several Talks with a capital T. I do wonder if this is because Alan Bradley plans to introduce an overarching plot-line in the next few books, so I’m watching this with interest.

Character-wise, I thought that apart from Flavia, only the Headmistress and the two doctors (the husband and wife who brought her over) stood out, and the latter two only because they were the first two new characters I saw. I liked the wit of the headmistress, but I’m afraid all the other supporting characters just blended together.

In fact, there was a scene where a character called Fabian reappears and I had to flip back to Flavia’s notes to figure out who she was because I had totally forgotten. I suppose that after the previous books, which had the same few supporting characters, having a cast of new characters show up was a bit too much for me to handle.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book in the Flavia de Luce series. Flavia is still the precocious, charming girl that I met and I am definitely looking forward to reading the next full-length book in the series.

By the way, I also went to a bookfair recently! I blogged about my book haul over here, if you're interested.