Boneshaker Review

Given my love of Victorian-style boots and filigree, my fascination with Jack the Ripper stories and my enjoyment of alternate history stories, you might suppose that I'd be a big steampunk fan. You would be supposing incorrectly, however. At some point I picked up a steampunkish novel, hated every poorly plotted confusing minute of it, gave up a couple of chapters in, and wandered away from the whole genre - or is it a subgenre? - entirely.

The other day I mentioned I was reading Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. Now, if this had been my first steampunk novel, I might have been more enthusiastic. This book is fun! I ordered it on a whim because I'd stumbled across a mention of it somewhere a couple of weeks ago, and it sounded interesting. I guess I caught an early reference to it, because now I feel like I'm seeing it everywhere I look. Anyway, the story is that an inventor had one of his machines go (possibly) rogue and plow through an underground chunk of downtown Seattle. It hit a vein of toxic gas that started turning people into zombies, and the powers that be ultimately ended up having to wall off the city to contain the gas and the undead. The main characters are the inventor's widow, Briar, and her teenage son Zeke. Zeke gets it into his head that he can clear his father's name by going into the walled-off part of the city, and Briar goes in after him after she learns where he has gone, and the story really gets moving from there. There are dirigibles and mad inventions and adventuring through ruined streets of Seattle, and of course, zombies!

Cherie Priest's writing is crisp and clean. Her descriptions pull you into the setting without being over the top, and the pacing pulls you through the story at breakneck speed. I actually read this book while brushing my teeth because I couldn't stand to put it down. Most of all, it was the characters that really made the story for me. From the main characters down to the minor ones in walk-on roles, I thought each one was well sketched out and multi-dimensional, even the ones who were deliberately mysterious.

Boneshaker was a fast read and very enjoyable too. I definitely recommend it. Now I've got to go check out the rest of Cherie Priest's books and see what else she has to offer.