• Defy or Defend

  • A Delightfully Deadly Novel
  • By: Gail Carriger
  • Narrated by: Emma Newman
  • Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (358 ratings)

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Defy or Defend  By  cover art

Defy or Defend

By: Gail Carriger
Narrated by: Emma Newman
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Publisher's summary

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

What listeners say about Defy or Defend

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

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.

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6 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

I'm a fan, but this one is skippable fluff

The best Parasolverse books pull off a rare balancing act: they're both broad satires of a genre and stirring examples of the genre. You care about the characters and get caught up in their adventures and romances, even while the humor pushes the limits of the ridiculous. Not "Defy or Defend," alas. It's all fluff, all arch whimsy, all Parasol and no Protectorate. It's harmless and occasionally fun, but a bit tiresome and utterly forgettable--which is fitting for a book focused on Dimity, who may be the most forgettable major Carriger character.

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Delightful

I love the world this writer has created where werewolves and vampires are a part of everyday society, and espionage is a skill learned early on in floating schools finishing fine young ladies. You may need to have a bit of back-story to fully enjoy this book, or you may decide that immersing yourself in the middle is your cup of tea for the day. Either way the story can stand on it's own, but for those of us in love with the finishing school series, it's so nice to find out whats keeping are favorite's from Geraldine's busy after finishing.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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A fun novella!

Thoroughly enjoyed this novella. Love seeing where they continue on after the Etiquette series. The characters are true to their younger selves while also having matured in believable ways. The narration was also absolutely wonderful, as I have experienced with all books in this universe so far. Thanks for a great listen!

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Grumpy vampires and cobwebs and why was the vampire queen hiding.

Very funny characters and parodies of intellectuals and poets. Some sexual content, of the instructive type, elegantly written, so Good
for teens and up . I am 75 and I laughed my head off.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

How to win friends & influence vampires

Dimity, code name “Sparkles”, likes to get her way. Crispin likes to keep her safe while she manages other peoples’ business. She mostly does this by seeding information to other people then convincing them things were their idea.

I such a way, she turns around an abject hive of vampires who have allowed a bully of a drone to make them miserable, in a bad way. Since most of them prefer being preformatively miserable, they weren’t equipped excise the bully.

Everything goes really smoothly because Dimity’s skill is smoothing over rough spots. So even when things don’t actually go smoothly, Dimity fixes everything so it feels smooth anyway. And Cris helps make things go. It’s a Ted Lasso season 1 experience - every time you’re braced for inevitable disaster, people are nice to each other instead. (Except the main bully, but even he gets dealt with.) Which is to say, if, like me, you’d like a story of things getting fixed & people feeling better, and a pleasant romance, this is a great choice.

There are some appearances of other series characters. And despite blood drinking vampires, werewolves, and secret agents who make this better rather than worse, the real suspension of disbelief is needed for the fast lead times & efficient supply chains allowing Dimity’s housekeeping miracle to occur.

Steam: Low. Not much happens on page or in detail, but is talked about with specifics and known to happen. There’s both the M/F main couple and a M/tF pairing. (“Well who wouldn’t want to lend their peignoir for a seduction in the woods?” paraphrase of Dimity after Justice literally runs off in her stolen nightwear.🤣) High focus on consent & caring.

Narration: Quite good except that some of the funnier lines are a bit lugubriously delivered. So it doesn’t, well, sparkle quite as much as I think it could in a few places, making it harder to catch the irreverent humor than with other narrators. MQ made it seem like we were in on the joke. Here, Emma played it straighter, which isn’t my preference, but it wasn’t bad. Unlike most, I didn’t find the slight pronunciation change to some of the names, compared to previous narrators, to be concerning or difficult. The sound quality was even and good.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Soothing and sweet

A wonderful story set in the Parasolverse. This one has less personal angst than her other novellas and is just a soothing and sweet story that after finishing I have used to fall asleep over and over.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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character names

character names not pronounced the same in each book. not a problem for those who did not read previous stories

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    1 out of 5 stars
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Horrible—did not finish

Horrible — could not finish the book, which is rare for me. I forgot how bad the prior book by this author I had read was.

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Glad I Listened!

I came to this series from having enjoyed this authors Parasol Protectorate, Custard Protocol and Finishing School series. Almost didn’t listen to this series due to the warning which made it sound like there could be graphic sex scenes and that’s not why I read books.

However, the sex and physical intimacy scenes in the books have been very tastefully and tenderly written, nothing like what the warning seemed to be referring.

I recognize the author might be trying to be sensitive but, honestly, calling special attention to such tenderly written material gives the wrong impression entirely.

If you have been holding off on this series because the warning has you thinking it might be soft porn or there is cursing that is not the case.

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