Book 8. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Title: Boneshaker
Author: Cherie Priest
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 416
Read before? No
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Next book: This Body of Death by Elizabeth George
Summary: In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.
But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.
Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.
His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.
Why I am reading this. This book is for our sci-fi/fantasy book club.
My thoughts. This was a difficult novel for me to determine whether I liked it or not. I don’t mind a little steampunk, even though it seems that most of it is written rather poorly. In the end, it was a mixed bag. I liked it more than I didn’t, but it still was a pretty average book.
Some of the issues I had in this book were simple. Man this book was slow. I don’t really know why, but it felt like it took forever to read this! Even if it was only 4 days!
For a city that was destitute and two people are going to a part of the city that was overrun by “zombies”…they sure got a lot of help. Help is not uncommon, but they both seemed to get extremely lucky in how they got into the dangerous part of the city. The book made it seemed like no one could do it (or that it would be extremely unlikely). Yet they both got into the city fairly easily.
Also what was with Lucy calling Briar baby and darling all the time. I was a bit confused by that and it just felt very strange to see. It just seemed to come out of nowhere. Does she call everyone that? It was just a very odd thing to read.
The characterization was not great, but wasn’t horrible either. I liked Brian much more then Zeke. Maybe it is just you can appreciate what a parent would do to try to save their child. While the child is really young and rebellious. The rest of the characters were kind of meh, Dr. Minnericht was such a stereotype and was just a bit annoying to read.
What Priest did right was making the city seem a dangerous place. With so many people only looking to survive and the city being very run down, you got the feeling of just how harsh it was to live there. And who doesn’t like airships!
I also liked the fact that she did not do the easy thing in regards to how she tied up the story. It would have been such a cop out for her to have done so. The ending actually redeemed what I thought of the book. It is always good to see people get what they deserve. :
Best thing about book. The idea and setting were handled pretty well.
Worst thing about book. How stereotypical and trite Dr. Minnericht was. He was forgettable.