Boneshaker (Sci Fi Essential Books) [Paperback]

Cherie Priest (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 29, 2009 | Series: Sci Fi Essential Books

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Maternal love faces formidable challenges in this stellar steampunk tale. In an alternate 1880s America, mad inventor Leviticus Blue is blamed for destroying Civil War–era Seattle. When Zeke Wilkes, Blue's son, goes into the walled wreck of a city to clear his father's name, Zeke's mother, Briar Wilkes, follows him in an airship, determined to rescue her son from the toxic gas that turns people into zombies (called rotters and described in gut-churning detail). When Briar learns that Seattle still has a mad inventor, Dr. Minnericht, who eerily resembles her dead husband, a simple rescue quickly turns into a thrilling race to save Zeke from the man who may be his father. Intelligent, exceptionally well written and showcasing a phenomenal strong female protagonist who embodies the complexities inherent in motherhood, this yarn is a must-read for the discerning steampunk fan. (Oct.)
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About the Author

Cherie Priest's Boneshaker was nominated for a Nebula and Hugo Award, won the Locus Award for best science-fiction novel, and was named Steampunk Book of the Year by steampunk.com. She is also the author of Dreadnought, Boneshaker's sequel, and of the near-contemporary fantasy Fathom. She debuted to great acclaim with Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Wings to the Kingdom, and Not Flesh Nor Feathers, a trilogy of Southern Gothic ghost stories featuring heroine Eden Moore. Born in Tampa, Florida, Priest earned her master’s in rhetoric at the University of Tennessee. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband, Aric, and a fat black cat named Spain.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; Original edition (September 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765318415
• ISBN-13: 978-0765318411
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (253 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

250 of 291 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not sure what book the 5-star reviewers are reading... February 6, 2010

By EB

Format:Paperback

Now I know by giving 3 stars, many readers will ask "did you hate it?" No, I didn't hate this book, but I must say I was unimpressed by it. Steampunk designs, airships, and zombies...how can one go wrong? Well, the answer is to make the plot wandering and the characters not that interesting.

I won't offer a summary of the book, because nearly every other reviewer has done the same. I'll start by saying that the synopsis on the back cover is kind of misleading, especially about the part regarding "rewrite history." It's a shame that portion is nowhere to be found in the novel. By that token, I was expecting the characters to come to some certain uncovering of secret history, and also come to some inner realization about themselves. Sadly, they don't. Zeke's request to clear his father's name unfortunately falls into a simple tale of "overthrow the bad guy." And as the story ends, the world they inhabit isn't changed in the slightest between the beginning and the end of the story.

The characters of Briar and Zeke aren't that compelling, either. Their only purpose in the story seems to be transitioning the reader from Plot Point A to B to C--which is *part* of the reason characters exist, but it shouldn't be the main portion of who they are. Why do they do what they do? What drives them? We don't get much internal dialogue or conflict, everything they feel is spoken.

In the same vein, they don't affect change within the story at all; everything seems to happen without them doing anything or contributing to the goings-on, like they're part of the scenery as opposed to full-fledged characters. So if they don't really *do* anything except move around as per the author's directions, then are they even really empathetic at all? And as I mentioned above, if they don't have an impact on the world they inhabit, then what's the point of telling the story about them in the first place?

Then there's the Steampunk aesthetic. And I use the word "aesthetic" because that's what Steampunk is...visual. It's an interesting concept, the "retro-futuristic" vision, but I've yet to see it done effectively. I'll begin the comparison to another "punk" style, cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is more than the visual style that we see or imagine. To quote wikipedia on cyberpunk: "It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order...Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and megacorporations, and tend to be set in a near-future Earth."

The story does have steampunk elements, but they are all visual, and unfortunately don't go beyond that in terms of what they're using the style to *try* to say. What is the author trying to use steampunk to reveal about society, and about ourselves? What morality play is in effect that ONLY steampunk can tell? (And also, what morals are we also to question by using the Steampunk genre?) It's not like "The Difference Engine," wherein the style reaches to the conclusion that the rapid development of technology is a bad thing. Steampunk shouldn't just be there for its own sake, it needs to DO something and serve a deeper purpose than just as what we see.

I would chalk this up to the notion that there is no "originator" steampunk title that "Neuromancer" serves as for cyberpunk, nothing that first sets the frame of reference and "rules" for how that world works. But that's not necessarily a fault with Boneshaker, but it doesn't help its case.

This is by no means a bad book. If you're a sci-fi and/or steampunk afficionado, this is probably for you. It's not laden with a lot of exposition or heavy sci-fi gibberish. While it didn't pull me in and hit me over the head with an Awesome Stick, your experience may vary. It's kind of a popcorn book, or a Saturday afternoon movie. If you're looking for lighter faire, you could do worse than Boneshaker.

102 of 124 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars apparently I'm the voice of dissent January 30, 2010

By NickelDiamer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Pros:

Compelling setup and central mysteries. Thought the story between the lead protagonists was reasonably well done.

Cons: Author did not care to develop her world.

Example - Head villain has a scary right hand man, as is typical of adventure stories. He strikes fear into the hearts of the locals. Yet in the final battle, he appears briefly and avoids the final confrontation. Why introduce him? The secondary characters are compelling, until they're abandoned. The lead fighter amongst the good guys appears to be dying, yet we're led to believe he might be saved by 19th century medicine?

Additonally, the central threat within the town (the zombies dubbed rotters) are never well developed. Minnericht can send them at his enemies, but loses control of them in the end. Why? They run the streets of the city, forcing the human residents into a subterranean existence, yet they can be repelled by bonfires? Moving a block or two in the city calls up hordes of rotters, yet the leads can linger in a house for nearly an hour? And what of the citadel like fort within the walls? Everyone agrees it's safe from the rotters, yet it's abandoned.

But the biggest problem with the story: it hints early on that living within the city walls is near suicidal (and even life in the outskirts is pretty illogical), yet no compelling reason is ever provided for why the residents stay. It's apparently not too difficult for humans to leave the city. Yet many reasonably upright citizens have spent a decade or more running for their lives from the rotters while being manipulated by a mad professor. Say what? I know the setting is an alternate history where the civil war rages on, but America is a big and open country in the late 19th century. People set out for the plains and southwest on a regular basis. Yet cleaning contaminated water all day or relying on filter masks to step outside is the best existence these people can imagine?

The beauty of sci-fi/fantasy as a genre is the ability of authors to create worlds that operate on their terms. But there need to be terms. The whole project feels adrift.

48 of 59 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Boneshaker bites off more than it can chew. March 16, 2010

By Leah

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Zombie book bites off more than it can chew: when I realized I'd been reading Cherie Priest's Boneshaker for over a month, I knew it had problems. Boneshaker isn't terrible, but it fails to deliver even as a popcorn penny-dreadful adventure--it's burdened with unnecessary exposition and monotonous movement from point to point. It's a 400-page story about walking from one place to another and back again.

The premise: it's Civil War-era Seattle, in an alternate steampunk-influenced reality where the war didn't end, airships cruise the skies, and an eccentric scientist named Leviticus Blue built a gold-mining machine that raged out of control and uncovered a terrible secret beneath the city: a seeping gas called the Blight that transforms people into rotters--zombies. The poisoned part of the city is walled off, and life marches on...until Blue's estranged son, Zeke, decides to go on a quest inside the walls to learn the truth about his publically-despised father. The story revolves around Zeke and his mother, Briar, who follows her son inside the walls to rescue him.

I was sold on the premise right off the bat: steampunk, zombies, poison gas, airship pirates--expecting an adventure full of wild characters, monsters, and machines, I descended on the book like a ravening revenant.

The problem is one of both plot and prose. Plot-wise, there is nothing more to the narrative than a mother chasing her son through the quarantined city. Along the way, encounters with the gruesome rotters are few, and easily avoided. The airship pirates figure peripherally, serving as devices to get characters from Point A to Point B. Denizens of the inner city are mere guides, shepherding mother and son on their way, and explaining how life within the walls works. In a sense, it evokes a criticism of The Lord of the Rings: the action consists of Walking, With Occasional Running.

In many ways, the rotters, pirates, and fanciful machines just feel like narrative fashion accessories--the rotters are such a non-presence that their inclusion merely functions as a disappointment. A brief, up-close encounter towards the end is snuffed short with a rifle blast. It becomes clear early on that this isn't a "zombie book," but neither is it really an adventure. The prose is flat, workmanlike, and marred with awkward descriptions and turns of phrase. In particular, the use of the word "proactive" was jarring to me. This word wasn't even coined until 1933, and wasn't in popular use till decades later.

Of course, this isn't reality, but alternate reality--as Priest explains rather defensively, and almost condescendingly, in an Author's Note after the Epilogue. I happened to read that note first (I like to skim through bonus content in a book to see if it offers any insight into the text), and it put a sour, Blight-like taste in my mouth. This note was unnecessary--the book is categorized under fiction--and made the author come across as controlling of her audience, and insecure of her work.

Interestingly, I noticed that same lecturing, defensive tone in the prose itself. There is much more Tell than Show--characters speak nearly every thought that pops into their heads, talking about rather than experiencing their feelings, and the world of zombified Seattle is largely described through dialogue that reads like an oral history. The end result is a strangely disconnected sense of being told about a story, rather than experiencing it through the characters.

Ultimately, Boneshaker aimed for high adventure and considerably missed the mark. However disappointed I am with the actual product, Priest still did some fantastic world-building, and I want to see her try again with a more compelling narrative set in this alternate reality. If Boneshaker had been told from the point-of-view of the hard-bitten denizens of the inner city, rather than the hapless pair who stumble around inside for a couple of days, it might have lived up to its wild premise. Fortunately, Priest has a quirky cast of disused oddballs to draw from for future tales in Blighted Seattle.