Book Review

[kenjari]

Boneshaker
by Cherie Priest

This fun, well-plotted steampunk novel is set in an alternate 1880 Seattle, where 16 years earlier, mad science had gone awry in the form a Leviticus Blue's giant drilling machine. On a test run, he drove it underneath the city, conveniently ripping through all the bank vaults, but inconveniently exposing a seam of deadly gas subsequently dubbed the Blight. Blue himself disappeared shortly after this. The Blight doesn't just kill, it turns people into zombies. As a result, a whole section of the city has been walled off, since the Blight is dense enough that this is an effective means of containing it.
For the last sixteen years, Blue's widow Briar and their son Zeke have been living in the un-Blighted section of Seattle, ostracized because of their connection to Leviticus and thus just scraping by. Zeke, being a headstrong teenager, decides to venture into the walled off section of the city to see if he can find out what happened to Leviticus, and Briar goes after him. Both Zeke and Briar discover that there is a community of people within the walls, eking out a living and surviving despite the zombies, Blight, and a capricious mad scientist.
Boneshaker does a great job of combining the steampunk and zombie genres, without ever laying it on too thick with either of them. The alternate history is believable, and the world itself is very compelling. It's also filled with interesting people. Briar is a great protagonist - pragmatic, competent, and a little on the grim side. Zeke is a little annoying at times, but that's because Priest is fairly accurate in her portrayal of a 15 year old boy. And then there are all the people within the walls - a strange group of people who would not be out of place in a weird western. Lucy O'Gunning and Captain Cly were my favorites. Swakhammer was pretty cool, too.
The plot is the central aspect of the book, and it's a good one. There's lots of action, and lots of exploration of the world within the walls. It didn't drag at any point, and I enjoyed it all very much. I did find some aspects of the climax and the final reveal a little anti-climactic, but not necessarily unsuccessful. The ending is a little bit open-ended, so I;m hoping that the next books in the series shed some light on what happens next to Briar and Zeke.

Comments

[aquafolius.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear someone else liked it, too!