Boneshaker (Clockwork Century, #1)

by Cherie Priest

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.

• ISBN10: 0765318415
• ISBN13: 9780765318411
• Publish Date: 29 September 2009
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 2 July 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Tor Books
• Format: Paperback (US Tall Rack)
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[tweetybugshouse]

I listened to this one via an audiobook from the library it intrigued me as it set in an alternate history for Seattle Washington which is in my home state so I am always invested in those stories. A scientist named Leviticus Blue built a machine to break beneath Alaska to reach the gold buried underneath. Instead, the Boneshaker destroys downtown Seattle and sets loose a poisonous gas called the blight.

The machine that destroyed Seattle reminds me of big bertha a real machine that Seattle was using during the Alaskan viaduct replacement project. They also refer to real life places such as Pike Place Market, Smith Tower, and real city streets around that area. Having been to these places really help make the story come more to life for me in my imagination.

The story centers around a mother and son relationship and alternates between the two chapters. This was done exceptionally well in the audiobook as there were two narrators telling the alternate chapters. The story moved along with neither point of view taking dominance over the other so the story when it comes together at the end really works out well.

Like any good dystopian kind of story you need an enemy in this one, we have The Rotters which are zombie-like creatures who been turned by the positions gas. This made the adventure inside the city exciting and dangerous. There are steampunk aspects to this story as well with airships and various inventions that were designed by Blue and commandeered by those who choose to stay inside the wall.

This is the first book in a series but I think each book is a stand-alone set in the same type of universe centered around events that involve some sort of steampunk machine. I am intrigued enough that I will be checking Dreadnought.

[celinenyx]

It's impossible to miss Boneshaker when you're considering books in the steampunk genre. It promises zombies, airships, and an alternate history.

The late husband of Briar caused the Blight - a poisonous gas that kills everything it encounters. To prevent the Blight from spreading, they built a great wall around the effected area. In order to clear his father's name, Zeke sneaks into the city. But what he finds there isn't what he was expecting at all.

The problem with Boneshaker is that it is misleading. From the ratings on Goodreads it becomes clear that many people feel disgruntled when reading it, many deciding to put it down before the end. I too was expecting something different than I got. Boneshaker is an adventure novel, first and foremost. The tension builds from encountering the mysterious, from near-deaths and near-misses as Briar and Zeke navigate the Blight-covered city. What Boneshaker is not, however, is a book that makes you think. There is no room for character development or even for more than an air of steampunk-ness. Even the zombies, while fuelling the action, are just there. This isn't the kind of book that will make you question the world and everything in it.

What this novel does do, and what it does well, is making you see the city and everything that happens in it. While I found many pages to be overwritten and the descriptiveness was heavy-handed, the action scenes were well done. When trimmed down to it's core, Boneshaker reads like an action video game. In the end it's nothing more and nothing less.

There are many side-characters that have their own contained stories, which will probably be expanded upon in the other Clockwork Century novels. When you're looking at the story that is truly told in Boneshaker, there is a meagre hand-full. The entire book could have been avoided had Briar and Zeke had a heart-to-heart before Zeke decided to be a stupid teenager. And that's okay. There certainly is a market for this sort of novel, but like other readers I was hoping for more story and less surviving in a hostile environment.

If you've ever wanted to read the bookish version of a zombie shooter, Boneshaker is the book for you.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

I expected to enjoy this book a lot more than I actually did. The Steampunk/Post Apocalypse/Zombie blend is a really great idea. I think the main problem I had was the simple fact that the characters didn’t mean anything to me and I didn’t care if they lived or died, also I do think the story droned on a little bit and could of been trimmed a little more to make the story more exciting.

[empressbrooke]

Probably more of a 3.5 than a 4, but I'm rounding up because I liked Priest's Eden Moore trilogy so damn much. What makes me hesitate to give this a full 4 stars is that I felt like so much time was spent running and hiding and running and sneaking that there were big gaps between where the plot moved forward. The running and hiding that Briar does when she first enters the walled city is great - it's a very tense, very exhilarating scene that I could see playing out in my head quite vividly. But when I wanted to learn more about this walled Seattle, and about its occupants and their reasons for being there, there was just more running instead.

I'd still recommend it to any steampunk fan. I found it a little less 'out there' than other steampunk books I've read - despite having zombies in it, it's far more grounded in reality. This alternate reality felt like it was only a small step sideways from our actual world.