Boneshaker

Cherie Priest

2009 • 416 pages

Ratings145

Average rating3.3

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 16 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.

-Goodreads

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Series

Featured Series

6 primary books7 released books

#1 in The Clockwork Century

The Clockwork Century is a 7-book series with 6 released primary works first released in 2008 with contributions by Cherie Priest.

#1.2

The Clockwork Century Ganymede

Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

Jeff

I'm liking it. I'm not a “steampunk” genre fan so much, but she really captures the claustrophobia of a walled-in-zombie-gas-ridden Seattle, and you can tell she's actually worn some goggles...

I also like that the central protagonists include a mother and son, and that the good/evil lines are drawn in gray, for the most part (aside from, y'know, the zombies themselves). Minimalist descriptions of the zombies help to add to the tension, as well.

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Loved this one, even though I haven't been a fan of either zombies or steampunk-y stuff in the past. Will continue the series...

July 26, 2010

Katherine Hooper

Zombies aren???t my favorite thing, but I did enjoy the story and the non-zombie characters in Boneshaker. Interesting setting ??? a mist-filled walled-off portion of Seattle.

http://www.fantasyliterature.com/fantasy-author/priestcherie/

September 7, 2013

Made in DNA

When Briar Wilkes' son sneaks off into the walled off section of Seattle to find evidence that his father was not responsible for the destruction of that part of the city, Briar must risk her own life to save him from the deadly gas inside that turns people into rotters (the living dead). Inside she encounters a cast of shady characters who seek to help her because of who her father was. But it's not going to be that easy. The fearsome Dr Minnerecht, who not only builds terrible weapons to combat the rotters but runs the drug trade in ‘sap', a derivative of the poisonous gas that engulfs that part of the city, also seeks her out. Is he saint or demon or perhaps just a shadow of a man she once knew?

An excellent story. It was really difficult to put this down. Well-developed characters inhabiting a believable setting of an alternate-history American West. Highly recommended for fans of all genres.

October 9, 2010