Clockwork Century
5 primary works
Book 1
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.
Book 2
Perhaps the mysterious cargo secreted in the second and last train cars has something to do with it? Mercy is just a frustrated nurse who wants to see her father before he dies. But she'll have to survive both Union intrigue and Confederate opposition if she wants to make it off the DREADNOUGHT alive.
Book 3
..if only it hadn't killed most of the men who'd ever set foot inside it. Now the only question is whether Cly and his crew will end up in the history books, or at the bottom of the ocean.
Book 4
Adventures await Rector “Wreck ’em” Sherman. About to turn eighteen, he’s facing ejection from the orphanage that passed for home. He should also choose a trade, but work is scarce in steam-powered Seattle. And Rector has more unconventional plans.
He’s started dealing in sap, a yellow narcotic produced by rebels and outlaws within the city’s toxic walled enclave. What’s worse, he’s been sampling his wares. Other problems include being haunted by an old friend with a grudge. The pressure builds until he sneaks behind the wall himself, seeking both (un)gainful employment and excitement.
As rumoured, he finds a terrifying host of the hungry undead, and then there’s the monster. Rector's certain that his attacker wasn’t human, or undead. But he’s going to need more proof than his own addled word to expose it. His new mission becomes a compulsion when others witness the creature’s destructiveness, and give its kind a name. The Inexplicables.
Praise for the series: ‘Everything you’d want … pure mad adventure’ Cory Doctorow, ‘Adventure of rollicking pace and sweeping proportions' Scott Westerfeld, ‘Cherie Priest is the high priestess of steampunk' The Seattle Times
Book 5
When she’s required to assist Abraham Lincoln himself, she has to put any old loyalties firmly aside – for a man she spied against twenty years ago. Lincoln’s friend Gideon Bardsley, colleague and ex-slave, is targeted for assassination after the young inventor made a breakthrough. Fiddlehead, Bardsley’s calculating engine, has proved the world is facing an extraordinary threat. Meaning it's not the time for civil war.
Now Bardsley and Fiddlehead are in great danger as forces conspire to keep this potentially unifying secret, the war moving and the money flowing. With spies from both camps gunning for her, can even the notorious Belle Boyd hold the war-hawks at bay?
Cherie Priest has been hailed as 'the High Priestess of Steampunk' - and you can see why in this latest wonderfully written adventure.