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WoGF Review: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
For Lynn Williams (lynnsbooks) books are much more than a hobby or a pastime they’re really an obsession. If she’s not reading a book, she’s talking about books on her blog, Lynn’s Book Blog, or deciding which books to buy next. Lynn reads all sorts of books, sometimes straying into YA, but her first love is fantasy. Recently she started to cross into science fiction thanks to the suggestions of some very excellent bloggers.
Editor’s Note: This review counts for October.
Just finished reading Boneshaker by Cherie Priest which is my (only just) October submission for Worlds Without End, Women of Genre Fiction reading challenge. I loved this book. It’s a seriously entertaining romping, steampunk adventure. The main protagonists are a mother and son and we watch as they go in circles around each other in an almost despairingly frustrating fashion which is both fast moving and really compelling to read.
So, Briar and Zeke, mother and son. They live in a less than comfortable condition and appear to be virtual outcasts. Blair’s husband, now passed away apparently, was an inventor. His last invention however was responsible for almost wiping out the city of Seattle. A gold mining drill, built to dig through hundreds of feet of snow was set to test under the streets of Seattle causing massive destruction and mayhem leaving not only the collapse of many streets but the release of a noxious gas which kills and ultimately turns people into zombies – rotters as they’re now called. In order to survive in the wake of this catastrophe the survivors built a massive wall around the perimeter of the blighted part of the city, not only to contain the zombies but also to prevent the spread of the gas which is too dense to breach the wall.
WoGF Review: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Rae McCausland (ParallelWorlds) was raised on speculative fiction and dedicated most of her teenage years to the dream of writing fantasy novels. During her college years, her interests shifted toward science fiction thanks to Star Trek and Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. She writes reviews for Parallel Worlds Magazine as a way of building connections between the perspectives of fellow sci-fi nerds and people of marginalized gender and sexual identities.
Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: None
Ace/Genderqueer characters: None
Rating: PG-13 for violence, gore, and language
Writing style: 1/5
Likable characters: 2/5
Plot/Concepts: 3/5
Leviticus “Levi” Blue was a genius who invented the Boneshaker, a massive drill intended for use in mining through glacial ice. Before it could ever be used, it tore beneath Seattle’s streets and released a gas called the Blight which turns all who breathe it into zombies. Fifteen years later, Briar Wilkes, Levi’s widow, works hard to support herself and her son Ezekiel, but when Zeke’s questions about his father and grandfather go unanswered, he passes into the walled-off, Blight-tainted part of town to find answers for himself. Briar leaves everything behind to rescue her foolhardy son, hoping it’s not too late to tell him the truth.
I was so excited to start this book. Seattle is my favorite city, and as I’m also fond of steampunk, I figured I was bound to like Boneshaker even if I’m not crazy about zombies. Reading the praises stamped on the cover and before the title page also built up my hopes. Unfortunately, before I’d gotten more than a few chapters in, my eyes began to glaze over with boredom and I found myself having to read paragraphs over again.
WoGF Review: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Matt W. (Mattastrophic), is a teacher and a PhD student in Rhetoric and Composition in Kentucky. SF is his literary indulgence, his escape from dissertation writing, and the subject of an occasional conference presentation. His blog, Strange Telemetry, is both his sounding board and his chronicle as he makes his way through the various sub-genres of SF in order to better understand his tastes as a reader and the craft of writing in general.
It is the late 19th century. The American Civil War has carried on for over a decade, and the America’s northwestern territories are mostly left to fend for themselves. On a commission from the Russian government, inventor Leviticus Blue creates a mighty machine, the Boneshaker, whose drill was intended to pierce the tough rock and permafrost in the vast oil fields of the Alaskan territories. Before its unveiling, however, Blue’s machine was turned on. The Boneshaker tore through his laboratory and through the underground of a great chunk of Seattle, in what would later become the state of Washington. Buildings collapsed, people and structures fell into massive sinkholes, and a noxious gas that turned people into rotting, cannibalistic monsters was released. Panic ensued, and in the confusion a well-respected lawman, Maynard Wilkes, went into the heart of the blight-gassed streets and released a mass of prisoners, possibly to help him take advantage of the chaos and rob the now-vulnerable banking district. Well, Wilkes died, Blue disappeared, and a great wall went up around downtown Seattle to cordon off the blight-filled streets and the rotters, the living dead, who now dwelt there.
Boneshaker – A rootin’, tootin’, zombie-shootin’ good time.
Let me start by saying, I am not a Steampunk aficionado, nor am I well acquainted with the average plots and ambient intentions for that particular sub-genre. But, I do know good fiction. And Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, (2009 Nebula Award nominee, 2010 Hugo and Locus SF Awards nominatee) is good fiction.
Steampunk, over-simplified, is science fiction Victoriana, or in this case, science fiction set in the Old West. It combines Science Fiction devices and themes with an affection for nineteenth century settings and adds an elusive third element of the macabre, or decadence, or daring do. "Boneshaker" succeeds, as a story, for two reasons. It doesn’t over-sell the setting, and it tells a rip-roaring adventure story. I was surprised to find I liked it as much as I did. And like it I did, by crackey.
The setting is an alternate reality Seattle in the 1870’s. The city has been devastated, and transformed, by an industrial accident of epic proportions. The city itself is walled off, and a toxic gas with strange properties ebbs out of the ground on the site of the accident itself. Outside the city, the United States still struggles with the Civil War, and the settlement of the West proceeds haltingly. Around the city, residents have come to terms with the wall, and the gaseous zombie state within it. All save one… one young buckaroo isn’t happy home on the range, and goes over the wall (actually, under it) in search of adventure.
His ma reacts like any ma would… lock and load, hit the road, she heads into the walled-off city to find her boy. The story carouses through underground engine rooms and pirate airships and line-’em-up-at-the-bar saloons, picking up speed until, before you know it, you, dear reader, are drooling on the pages like one of the many, many zombies that chase our heroes around the city.
Suffice it to say, if you’ve never felt the peculiar, absinthe rush-like urge to grab a Steampunk tale, this is a good one to start with. And if you’ve already got top hats and monocles and claws and fishnet and, um, other things hanging in your closet already, put this one on your list. It’s a rootin’, tootin’, zombie-shootin’ good time.
Boneshaker is published by Tor Books, out now in Trade Paperback.
