Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

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.

Reviewed by celinenyx on

3 of 5 stars

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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.

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  • Started reading
  • 24 August, 2015: Finished reading
  • 24 August, 2015: Reviewed