Customer Reviews

Boneshaker (Sci Fi Essential Books)

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(52)
3 star:		(43)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

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.

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.

Cherie Priest is one of those authors I've been hearing good things about for years. However, I've never tried her books previously as I'm not into horror or ghost related tales much, but when I heard she was doing a Steampunk book I immediately added it to my watch list. It did not disappoint at all. Boneshaker is full of Steampunk awesomeness. The setting is unbelievable detailed with its decrepitness yet infused with a ragamuffin lifestyle of people getting by in the most unexpected ways. You've got mad scientists, steampowered tech, ravenous zombies, air ships, and air pirates all in an eerie apocalyptic landscape. Yet this is a story with heart.

Set in Seattle circa 19th century, but in an alternative history where the civil war is on going and the gold rush made it to Seattle a little earlier. Boneshaker refers to a machine that wrecked the downtown of Seattle about 15 years prior, which released a gas that turned people to zombies. The ruined portion of the city has been walled-up since and most people live in what is called "The Outskirts." Zeke is looking to redeem the Father and Grand Father he never knew for their involvement surrounding the events of the boneshaker so he travels into the walled-off city looking for proof. His mother predictably goes in after him, but what ensues is a rollicking look into a vivid world. The point of view switches between mother and son as they stumble through the city and meet allies and enemies.

One thing that may bother some hardcore Steampunkers is this isn't much real Victorian-ness going on, but the other elements of Steampunk are here. Boneshaker has more of a greasy soot covered Wild West feel to it, but it does make it refreshing to leave England. The characters start off a bit standoffish, but grow quickly endearing. Briar is especially a tough nut to crack as she has built-up so many layers between her and her son Zeke, yet she is my favorite. Briar is a woman who made some very hard choices in life and hasn't had it easy because of those paths chosen. There are a lot of other intriguing characters as well in this blight soaked city.

Superbly plotted and paced, if you are going to read one Steampunk book this year make it Boneshaker. I give Boneshaker 9 out of 10 Hats. Cherie has a second novel in the series titled Dreadnought coming in 2010 with Tor and a novella, Clementine, expected with Subterranean Press as well.

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.

Highly underwhelming, and a timely reminder of why I find most steampunk to be a stimulus for self-indulgent laziness rather than an effective subgenre of science fiction. There are positive things in this book, but in no small part this was one of those works where such elements deepen my frustration. It's clear that Priest is not without some significant talent, but here it's applied in a book that on the whole is low quality. The strengths lie partly in the opening and the way it plunges in a sense of an exhilarating and distant world, and partly in characterization, which feels fully authentic and with a nice preponderance of detail. I'm particularly found of the little indications of imperfect perception that come across--a character in anxiety overlooks a letter lying in plain sight, and this element is portrayed not as a critical failure but a realistic moment of emotions. Similarly, the main relationship of the piece, a mother-son antagonism and ultimately love, feels fairly well actualized.

The bigger problem, though, is the utter arbitrariness of the plot, setting and pace. The ultimate plot, as it develops with all its gas-created zombies, mad scientists and weird environment is highly contrived, and feels manipulated by the author to produce a situation of episodic conflict with an eventual ostensibly unified story. I have no objection per say to a thoroughly absurd situation--reference the Manual of Detection above--but here it's unattached to real comedy or an effective satire, and the whole tone is far too serious to make the story work. The larger incoherence becomes problematic as the story emerges with no inherent spark or thematic connection beyond the story, the point of the book is to spin its wheels showing a contrived plot and shadowy backstory of a mad scientist, and we're supposed to take this layout at face value.

There's a sense across the novel, first emerging in prominent sparks around page forty and becoming overwhelming by the end, that it features well realized, three-dimensional characters inhabiting a cardboard world. What makes this contrast dispiriting is that it feels over-tailered to a subset of science fiction that wants to see weird nineteenth century mutations and crazy science, and isn't particularly demanding with anything meaningful with these elements. It's a book that sacrifices coherence, ambition and effectiveness as science fiction for the sake of a fun thrill ride. And, at least for my reading, it doesn't achieve that measure of fun in result.

I was partly hampered by my expectations of this book--after hearing exultant reviews it probably gave more disappointment than I would have otherwise felt. Beyond that, since reading it, Boneshaker has been shortlisted for both a Hugo and Nebulas, which I can't help feel represents fandom siding with style over substance to a large degree.

This is an adventure story told from the varying point of views of a mother and son. The son, Zeke, goes into a walled in city of toxic gas, zombies, and dangerous people to learn more about his scientist father. The mother, Briar, goes in after him to save him. Both wander through the city (a post-apocalyptic 1800's Seattle) encountering the many dangers while making some new friends.

At a thick 414 pages, you would think the story would be pretty complex. It isn't. It's really a pretty basic story about a mother and son trying to survive a dangerous world and make it out alive. Any questions the reader has are answered in a couple pages at the very end, a quick wrap up, and then it's over.

This is the first "steampunk" novel I have read, and it's not as out there as I anticipated. Priest alters history for her own purposes, moving events like the civil war and the invention of electricty around to suit her purposes, which is no problem in my opinion. Fiction is fiction, do what you need to.

Generally this novel was just alright. A warning to zombie novel lovers: it's not really a zombie novel. Zombies play a role but they function as background scenery more than anything else.

There are several really cool things about Cherie Priest's Boneshaker: the first is the eye-catching cover; the second, that it's steampunk; the third--only noticeable when you peek inside--is the brown- (née, sepia) colored font. Reading Boneshaker is like looking into an old Victorian photograph--the exact effect I'd want if I was writing a book to fit a genre influenced primarily by that era. This isn't the first book I've read with a font color other than black (an edition of Michael Ende's The Neverending Story that I own comes to mind), but it was surprising and fit well with the genre.

Cherie Priest did a little (okay, a lot) of alteration to history for this book. The Civil War is instead the Great Rebellion and has been ongoing for the past 18 years. I'm not too familiar with Seattle's history, but she mentions in the Author's Note at the end that she took many liberties with that as well. If you can stand suspending your belief in historical accuracies and want to read a book that's all about "a grand and dangerous adventure" (p. 62) then Boneshaker shouldn't bother you at all.

In fact, if you like zombies, you'll love Boneshaker; let me tell you why. The book opens with an excerpt from a book in progress written by Hale Quarter laying out the historical foundation of which we'll need to know in order to understand the repercussions of certain events. It's the 1860s and the Russians want to break up Alaskan ice to find gold, but haven't got the means to do it themselves. Lucky Leviticus Blue wins the contest that follows and in a short amount of time, creates Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-shaking Drill Engine. Inspired by greed and power, the Russians pressure Blue to finish earlier than the deadline, but a test run for demonstration purposes goes awry and Blue's Drill Engine winds up tearing through the underground of several blocks including those of a district lined with banks. Money is stolen, people are injured and killed, but when it's all over Blue and his machine are nowhere to be found. Shortly after, healthy people otherwise unaffected by the Drill's menacing journey start to fall sick and die, but they don't stay dead for very long.

When the novel opens onto the first chapter, we meet Briar Wilkes and her son Ezekiel--Zeke for short--living in what's now become the Outskirts. The drill's haphazard run opened up an underground vein that's been releasing dangerous fumes into the air for the past 16 years; the blocks ruined by this blight has been partitioned off from the rest of the city. A huge wall now separates it from unaffected grounds and it's in the Outskirts Briar has been raising her son. As we soon find out, there's a man named Hale Quarter nosing around for information regarding Briar's husband and father--Leviticus Blue and Maynard Wilkes, respectively. Everyone believes Blue responsible for the Great Blight; Briar and Zeke have had the past 16 years as punishment, reminders from an angry public that won't let Blue's legacy die. Convinced of his father's innocence, Zeke develops a plan to enter the old city and find evidence to prove his case.

Boneshaker is all action and suspense, with zombies. In fact, I felt at one point the zombies almost became the driving force of the novel, leaving Zeke and Briar's journey to the periphery. It seems as if the book started with one purpose in mind--finding the truth about Leviticus Blue--and the zombies became the rouse for Priest to change tactics halfway through the book. As it turns out, there's more to the novel than Leviticus Blue.

The suspense that looms over the mysterious Minnericht was written well--so well I was a little scared when he actually appeared; he was creepy, frightening, and forceful in all the ways Priest had led us to believe. He's only one character out of an entire cast that all stood out amazingly on their own. If Priest can do one thing really well, it's write interesting and vivid characters. My particular favorites were Lucy, Cly, and Jeremiah (although why his dialogue was always italicized when he wore his mask, I'll never understand). The women in particular are strong-willed and independent. They're as fierce as the next person in an environment I'd expect nothing less from. I was only confused because a lot of times Zeke came off as too immature and trusting for a boy of his age (15 going on 16). For the sake of the book, there wouldn't be too much of a plot without him making certain decisions, but I couldn't help thinking he was more like 12 going on 13 for as youthful as he acted.

In any case, there were a couple of other disappointments. I wish Priest had done more with lemon sap because let's face it: a drug that, with chronic and prolonged use, will eventually turn you into a zombie is a really, really cool idea. I also was never quite sure what actually caused the blight--the reasons were given as suggestions, offered to the characters and readers as something logical to consider, but never in such a way that I trusted it completely as something to believe. Other than that, I loved Boneshaker.

There's all sorts of extras that make the book worth reading, the least of which is the setting; the Civil War never looked so different when labeled the Great Rebellion and prolonged for 18 years. I think most of all, the characters fleshed out the personality of the city with their rough, no-nonsense demeanors, soft hearts, and determination. If you want to read a book about survival and hope with a menacing bad guy and weapons with names like the Doozy Dazer, then read Boneshaker. The zombies and the mad scientist don't hurt either.

I don't even know where to begin. The book failed on so many levels. The characters were bland, one-dimensional, and flat. The plot was boring and contrived. The prose, obnoxious, with the author's overuse of dialogue tags, telling (rather than "showing"), and clunky awkward phrasing.

I found myself skipping through the pages as the author was verbose in areas where she didn't need to be. Pointless dialogue moved the story from Point A to Point B rather than enrich the readers' imaginations. It was a chore to read, and finally, I had to give up. I didn't care enough about the characters to find out if Briar found her son. About 40% through the book, I just stopped caring. After reading Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, this book read amateurish. Perhaps I shouldn't have read Boneshaker after reading Hunger Games, but even if I had read Boneshaker first, I still might not have been able to finish it.

Don't be fooled by the intriguing cover. This book is a waste of time.

I did a little research to see what I could find in the "Steam Punk" genre of Sci-Fi literature, and this title came up strong along with Jay Lake's Escapement. I didn't care too much for the latter and Boneshaker really made me shake my head to wonder what everyone was so thrilled about.

I cared for this very little. Yes. One needs to suspend one's disbelief when treading these waters, but this bordered on absurd. Mom ventures into a walled up Seattle, that is filled with toxic gas and zombies who want you for lunch, to find her son. As it turns out the city has a population that never left after it was walled up. Somehow these residents just.....stayed. They thought it would be better living in the city, for reasons of nostalgia(?) than living on the outside. Let me get this straight. Live in constant danger of dieing from toxic fumes, being eaten alive by zombies and living under the thumb of a violent, tyrannical madman, or living outside the city. Yup. I would love to live in the city.

Other problems. The city has been walled up for 16 years. There are a crapload of zombies still around. How is it that 1. they haven't withered away (it seems people have learned to avoid them) and 2. the locals haven't hunted them down and wiped them out? There are a fixed number of them in a fixed area. How tough could it be?

The writing isn't too hot either. Cherie Priest hasn't found a voice yet. The writing is all over the place. There is no consistent tone here. And the story doesn't end. It just sort of stops. It were as though she hit the 400 page mark and said "Oh my God. I need to round this thing up." It's much like the low rent mystery films of the 40s and 50s where they pulled the string in the last 3 minutes to tie up all the loose ends.

Sorry. I won't say this was a painful read but it certainly wasn't pleasant. I liked some of the ideas present but too few to recommend this to anyone. I liked Sterling's and Gibson's "The Difference Engine" which is why I'm seeking out more titles in this genre, but so far I'm 0 for 2.

In looking for a second book to read on Kindle, I fell for Amazon's trap. "Hey Jeff," they said, "if you liked Jeff Vandermeer's Finch, you might also like Cherie Priest's Boneshaker!"

Huhm, I thought, looking at the cover art to Boneshaker -- a tight shot of a woman's face, a massive dirigible reflected in her goggles -- this looks kind of interesting. So I read the description, which promised a vivid steampunk America, where the Civil War dragged on for ten years and the city of Seattle was decimated a mad inventor's earth-drilling device, dubbed "the Boneshaker." A machine that apparently cracked open a cache of poisonous gas buried deep in the earth, gas that then erupted into the city and turned people into ravenous zombies called "rotters."

Zombies, mad scientists and steampunk technology? Sign me up!

And of course, Kindle made it all the more easy. Unlike other Amazon recommendations for books made from the guts of dead trees, there was no wait. I bought the book, woke my Kindle, and there it was sitting on my home screen.

So, here's the story: Boneshaker is about a woman named Briar Wilkes, the daughter of folk hero lawman Maynard Wilkes and the widow of Leviticus Blue, inventor of the amazing Boneshaker machine. After her husband's initial test of the machine caused massive destruction and the onset of the zombie "Blight," Briar managed to escape to the city's ramshackle suburbs, now called "the Outskirts," where the surviving citizenry raised a massive wall around the infected area to keep the gas and zombies out. It's after this cataclysm that Briar learns that she's pregnant with Leviticus's son.

Flash forward some fifteen years -- Briar is now a pariah for her husband's central role in creating the Blight, and she and her son Zeke are living a meager existence in the Outskirts. Tired of the constant humiliation of being the son of a mad genius who ruined a city, Zeke decides to venture back into the city to uncover some evidence to exonerate his father. Once there, we learn that there are surviving people inside the Blighted walls, called "Doornails," and that diseased city is now controlled by a mad scientist named "Dr. Minnerecht" who may in fact be Leviticus Blue in disguise.

Briar then follows her son into the city in order to save him, and the two become locked into the orbit of Dr. Minnerecht, spiraling through a series of action set pieces that inevitably lead to a confrontation with both the past and present.

My overall response to Boneshaker is fairly positive. It was an entertaining read, well-paced and featured some compelling characters. Briar and Zeke are both great and defy stereotypes -- the central mystery of Dr. Minnerect's identity is enough to keep turning pages, especially in the book's final act. It's also important to note that Boneshaker is strongly influenced by the 2007 video game, Bioshock -- which featured a mad inventor at the center of a crumbling city filled with zombie-like monsters and the morally-challenged survivors of the old order. Cherie Priest even gives a nod to Bioshock on her Web site, so I know I'm not crazy. This is not to say that I'm accusing Ms. Priest of ripping off Bioshock, just that its influence is strongly felt. Considering Bioshock is in many ways a response to Ayn Rand's writings, it's cool to see it feed back into literature.

In terms of some issues I had with the book, my primary problem was the anachronistic use of language. Now, I'm fine with the historical divergences -- this is an alternate history steampunk novel after all. But the dialog seemed a bit too modern at times, and not at all like the words spoken by 19th Century characters. Robert Charles Wilson's Julian Comstock, though set in a future where technology had devolved to 19th Century levels, featured characters who spoke in a believable 19th Century dialect. That's not the case here, in a book that takes place ostensibly in the 19th Century. I found that this deficiency on the part of Boneshaker took me out the book and at times compromised the believability of the world.

Also the rotters, while intended to be a constant menace, don't feel all that threatening. The focus of the book is on Briar, Zeke and the people they meet inside the city -- the rotters only serve as a minor distraction. I was disappointed that there weren't stronger horror elements in the story.

In addition, Priest adds an author's note at the end to defend herself and the book from perceived critics. I always hate it when a writer feels the need to offer a lengthy foreword or afterword where they largely ramble on about their own genius (see: King, Stephen). But I especially hate it when an author decides to defend their work from perceived critics in the book itself, as a way to silence any negative reviews. My advice to Ms. Priest is to grow a thicker skin -- once a creative work is out in the world, it will be criticized even by its fans (and I do count myself as a fan of Boneshaker and Cherie Priest). Especially now that we live in the Internet age, where bloggers and podcasters (like me) are free to say whatever they want about a book without a newspaper, magazine or journal to filter them out. Some critics may have a good point, and it may be worth acknowledging that some criticism is valid.

However, that said, it is not enough to prevent me from recommending Boneshaker. If you want an entertaining read featuring a fully-rounded (and flawed) female protagonist in the mode of Ellen Ripley, then this is the book for you. I hope that Briar and her son Zeke put in another appearance in additional "Clockwork Century" books -- I'd hate this to be their only adventure. I look forward to seeing what great things Ms. Priest has planned for her future books.

Note to Kindle readers: As always, there are some glitches and problems with the text formating. For instance, I noticed an issue where paragraphs that start with a "W" word instead rendered "w" in lower-case. I wish publishers would put a stronger effort into testing their books on Kindle and making sure the digital typesetting is as good as the print edition.