Jacaranda - Cherie Priest

According to Priest, Jacaranda is the final work she will write in her Clockwork Century setting. The series consists of five novels, one short story and, including this one, two novellas. I've had great fun with the previous entries in the series, even if they are not the most challenging works in the Steampunk genre, so I really wanted to read this one as well. Like the previous novella in the series, this one was published by Subterranean Press and like pretty much everything they publish, it is a beautiful little book. Great attention has been paid to the design and artwork. Subterranean books are not cheap but they always make sure you know that you paid for quality. The number of hardcovers is very limited so if you want one, better be fast.

On an island off the coast of Texas a hotel built with the finest technology the late nineteenth century has been making a name for itself. The place is thought to be haunted. Two dozen people have already died under mysterious circumstances. The authorities can't be bothered to investigate the deaths anymore and so an unlikely crew of a nun, a Texas ranger and a Mexican priest gathers at the hotel to investigate. As a hurricane barrels down on them, the terrible truth about the Jacaranda Hotel slowly reveals itself to them.

Jacaranda is set in the Clockwork Century but it is only very loosely tied to the rest of the stories. There is a reference to the rotters, the zombie-like victims of an addictive substance introduced in opening novel  Boneshaker, a few references to the alternate version of the American civil war the series covers and a reference to one of the major characters on Ganymede, the third novel in the series. That is all there is to be found of the Clockwork Century really. With a few minor bits of rewriting the whole thing could have been completely separated from the Clockworld universe. As a consequence, it can be read independently without missing much of what is going on. Jacaranda is not a novella meant to close of any dangling threads or answer any remaining questions. The climax of the series is clearly the final novel Fiddlehead.

In essence, Jacaranda is a haunted house story. The plot is not all that original and so the success of the story depends on the execution. Such stories need a certain atmosphere, a buildup of tension at just the right place, revelations at the right time. Priest realized this and paced her story accordingly. Where her first Clockwork Century novella Clementine felt constrained by the need to keep the word count under a certain number (it was intended for Subterranean but for contractual reasons Priest would have had to offer it to Tor first if it got above a certain word count), this one feels about right in length. In fact, take out a few of the plentiful descriptions of a storm approaching and it might even have been a bit shorter.

Atmosphere is important to the story though, Priest uses the approaching hurricane to ramp up the tension. The gradually darkening sky, the preparation for the storm, the subconscious nervousness caused by a rapidly dropping air pressure and the ever prescient threat of the hotel all  add to the sense of dread in the story. People die in it of course, but there is no need for buckets of blood or dozens of bodies. Like in a good horror movie, what you don't see is scarier than what is explicitly shown. It will not surprise the reader that in classic horror tradition, the climax of the story coincides with the climax of the hurricane.

Priest uses another element in her story pops up often in horror movies: guilt. Who gets to die and who is involved in the story in the first place is decided by often peculiar notions on who is deemed guilty and who is considered innocent and free of sin. The visitors of the hotel all bear the burden of guilt until it is too late. While none of them can actually be touched by the law of morals, each of them has broken a vow or a promise that weighs on their conscience. It is what draws them in an keeps them from running. At some level, the guilty want to be punished and the hotel is ready to extract a kind of justice from them. I guess guilt is not a surprising theme in a story where two of the main characters are Catholics who dedicated their lives to god. Especially later on in the novella, this biblical view on sin and guilt becomes more important. I can't say that was my favourite part of the story.

I must admit that this book was not quite what I was hoping for. It certainly doesn't deliver what I read the Clockwork Century books for. The hotel has  few gadgets but they are not important to the story, nor is the alternative history Priest has laid out. Haunted house stories are not really my thing either. They tend to be so stuck in horror clichés that they rarely make for challenging or interesting reading. Putting my personal preferences aside for the moment, I do see a story that is well executed. Some readers may not be entirely convinced by the climax but it worked well enough for me. Jacaranda was entertaining reading, but as a postscript to the Clockwork Century, it is essentially unnecessary. Read it if you enjoy a good haunted house story or if you can't stand to leave a series unfinished. If those two don't apply to you, there are more interesting book out there.

Book Details
Title: Jacaranda
Author: Cherie Priest
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Pages: 181
Year: 2015
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-59606-684-7
First published: 2015

Fiddlehead - Cherie Priest

Fiddlehead is the fifth book in Priest's Clockwork Century series, published by Tor, that started with the well received Boneshaker in 2009. There is a sixth volume of novella length that has been published by Subterranean. Priest has written the novels in such a way that they are understandable if you haven't read all of them but with references to just about all of the previous five volumes, you definitely get more out of it if you have. For the moment Fiddlehead is the last book in the series. Priest doesn't rule out returning to the Clockwork Century but the main conflict in the books is resolved in this volume. It's a fitting conclusion to the series, bringing together a number of things set into motion in previous volumes.

Dr. Gideon Bardsley is an escaped slave with a ravenous intellect. After his escapes has made his name in academia and is now working on a primitive computer of his own design nicknamed Fiddlehead. His ultimate goal is the find an answer to the question of how to end the American civil war, which has been exhausting the Union and Confederation for almost two decades. Not everybody wants the war to end however. Bardsley is nearly killed in an attempt to destroy the machine. He manages to get away with a partial print of the solution Fiddlehead has come up with. Much to his surprise, according to the machine neither side will win the war if they keep ignoring the greater treat that looms over the continent. He turns to his patron for help. The crippled Abraham Lincoln calls on his security staff to keep Bardsley safe and hires Pinkerton agent and former southern spy Maria "Belle" Boyd to help them stop a catastrophe from happening.

The series as a whole is not short on historical characters but in this novel, two of them play an important role. I've already mentioned Abraham Lincoln, who, in this time line,  barely survived the 1865 assassination attempt and is now bound to a (properly Steampunked) wheelchair. The other is Ulysses S. Grant, former general and now president of the Union, his term being stretched far beyond any president before him because of the war. Priest mentions what happened to Andrew Johnson somewhere in the book but that detail escapes me at the moment. Lincoln is portrayed as a quiet, intelligent man. Grant is a alcoholic and a man more suited for the battlefield than the White House. I suppose those with a bit more intimate knowledge of American history will recognize more of the details. Priest has deviated so far from history as we know it at this point that I can't really say anything sensible on how much history is in them. I did find it surprising they got as much attention as they have in the novel though.

Boyd is one of the main characters in Clementine and she plays quite an important role in the story. Where Bardsley is mostly pinned down at Lincoln's estate, she travels the war torn nation, trying to undo the plot of Katherine Haymes, owner of the largest arms manufacturer in the south and a woman woman who feels the war should continue as long as possible. Where Boyd is our kick-ass heroine, Haymes is a woman without a conscience and the evil nemesis in this book. I enjoyed Boyd's pragmatism a lot in this novel. She is very aware of how society sees women and how to exploit that to her advantage. Priest manages to get more out of her than in Clementine where she clearly struggled to keep the wordcount down.

Haymes on the other hand didn't work quite as well. Where Boyd is a point of view character, we mostly get to see Haymes through the eyes of Grant, who has, to put it mildly, conservative views on the role of women in politics or business. He dislikes her just because of that. Haymes is also guilty of what can only be described as a war crime, testing a new weapon on Union prisoners of war. The rumors about this atrocity have preceded her and it clashes with Grant's ideas on a fair fight. Grant's wife points out his prejudices to him but despite that, Haymes still comes off as pure evil. A little more ambiguity would have been much more in line with wat characters like Boyd, Mercy Lynch (the main character in Dreadnought)  and Sally Tompkins experience in the way of sexism and how to overcome it. Just a hint of redeeming quality might have done is. In a series that has quite a few rounded female characters Haynes' performance is jarring.

Priest tries to bring all the clues of the epidemic brewing in the west together in this novel. That means there are quite a lot of references to other books. The aforementioned Mercy Lynch pops up quite a lot when the letters she has sent east detailing her research on the effects of the gas that has destroyed Seattle fall into Boyd's hands. One of the other passengers of the ill-fated Dreadnought also shows up in the final of the novel and there is an appearance of Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey, one of the main characters in Clementine. In the end, it is in Boyd that all this information comes together and that she is able to act to prevent disaster. The way Priest handles links to previous books without making them a must read,  something she does throughout the series, is one of the things that make it stand out. Structurally this series is very clever and even in the book that concludes the series, she manages not to burden it with too much back story.

I guess there are quite a few things one could say on the historical accuracy of this series or the way is skirts the issue of slavery that hangs over the Civil War. The Clockwork Century doesn't aim to go into detail about that. In the end it is mostly an adventure, their attraction is the strange setting, the machines that almost seem to have a character of their own, the walking dead that haunt the city of Seattle and the gunfights and airship battles that inevitably ensue. Priest provides plenty of that. I must admit I liked these books more for the strange machines and vivid settings than the alternative history. Priest's extensive tinkering with history in favour of a single point of divergence probably makes it a bit less interesting for the real history buffs. They are great fun to read however and Fiddlehead is a fitting conclusion to the series. I'm glad I've been on board for the entire journey and if Priest does decide to return to this alternative history I'm definitely putting it on my to read list.

Book Details
Title: Fiddlehead
Author: Cherie Priest
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 366
Year: 2013
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3407-7
First published: 2013

The Inexplicables - Cherie Priest

The Inexplicables is the fourth, or, depending on whether you want to count the short novel Clementine, the fifth book in Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century. An alternative history where the American civil war has raged for two decades and all manner of strange Steampunk contraptions are in use. I've read al the previous volumes and enjoyed each of them. They are not terrifically complex books but great fun to read. Each book is written to be self-contained and centrers on a different main character, it is not necessary to have read any of the previous volumes to enjoy this book. I do think you get a lot more out of it if you have however. Priest makes a lot of the important characters of previous novels reappear as secondary characters in this book.

Priest takes us back to the location of Boneshaker, the first novel in the series. Seattle is still walled off from the outside world to contain the toxic gas that is pouring liberally form a rupture in the earth. The main character Rector " Werck'em" Sherman grows up in an orphanage outside the walls. His parents were likely the victims of the original disaster that struck the city. Life doesn't seem to have too much in store for him and Rector finds himself in deep trouble when the nuns running the orphanage decide his has reached to age of eighteen. Turned out from the orphanage, addicted to the poisonous sap an with no means of sustaining himself or feeding his addiction, Rector decides to try his luck inside the walls of the city. He finds the place full of factions, on the verge of a gang war and in the clutches of a huge creature attacking anyone unwise enough to go out alone. He will have to adapt to this new environment fast if he is to survive in this most challenging of environments.

Addiction is an important theme in this book. Sap slowly kills and Rector is pretty close to the point of no return when we meet him. His cravings and withdrawal symptoms run through the entire narrative. Even though Rector has seen the devastating effects of the drugs he dealt himself at one time, he is still sorely tempted. At the end of the novel I like to believe he will stay clean but Priest left me doubting. Even is the drug is entirely fictional I think it is a pretty convincing depiction of substance abuse. Rector's self-destructive urges don't really endear me to him but it does underline the dreariness of his life and the bad hand it has dealt him. In a way, Rector embodies the problems of the city. Both are dependent on the very thing that destroys them.

The story of Seattle's split community is also pushed forward. The revenue from the sale of sap are vital to maintain the city, which can only be in habited at huge expense. The group who tries to get by more honestly is well aware of the fact that they wouldn't survive without the investment of the local drug lord in their infrastructure. It makes the whole community very morally ambiguous. I guess that suits the main character fine. Such display of wealth and a monopoly on the drug trade is sure to attract those who want a share of the pie without fully understanding the risks involved in running the operation. A conflict is inevitable and I very much liked the way in which Seattle's inhabitants pull together to deal with that threat.

It does lead to some interesting questions though. We see Mercy Lynch, the main character in Dreadnought doing research on sap and it's effects. She is very aware of the link between the rotters, the blight, the sap and war effort and if she succeeds in stopping the trade in sap, the concequences will be huge for Seattle as well as the rest of the nation. The overarching story in these novels is very far in the background but it is still there. I guess at some point Priest is going to tie all of those things up and somehow end this long-lasting conflict. As much as I am enjoying the fast and furious adventure stories that form the backbone of these novels, the alternative history intrigues me even more. Personally I wouldn't mind if it had been a bit more at the forefront.

On top of the alternate history, the troubles of Rector and the gang war that is about to erupt, there is the matter of the mysterious creature attacking people. Priest involved Princess Angeline in this story line, the oldest daughter of Chief Seattle, after which the city was named. She is a historical character and Priest makes her into quite a fearsome lady. On the one hand I liked this link with local history (I'm sure there are more but I must admit I am not that familiar with the region) but it was the one storyline that didn't really mesh in with the others. It was a good reminder that even in those dark days, money and power aren't all there is to life though.

Priest delivered another strong volume in the Clockwork Century series. Like the previous volumes The Inexplicables is a fast, fun read. People who loved the previous books will want to pick up this one. Personally I get the feeling that Priest is steadily working towards a resolution of the overarching story but I don't think we'll see it in the next novel Fiddlehead, which is scheduled for release in November 2013 and will have Belle Boyd as the main character. Readers who have read Clementine will remember Belle for sure. I'm sure Fiddlehead will be on my to read list late this year. This is one series I mean to keep up with.

Book Details
Title: The Inexplicables
Author: Cherie Priest
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 366
Year: 2012
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2947-9
First published: 2012

Ganymede - Cherie Priest

Ganymede is the fourth book in Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century setting and the third one published by Tor. Priest had already sold a fourth book to Tor, to be published next year, and recently is was announced that there will be a fifth novel in 2013. This series hit the ground running with Boneshaker (2009), which was nominated for a Hugo last year, and it seems only to have picked up speed since. Priest certainly managed to hook me on her interesting mix of steampunk, alternate history and zombies. Although Ganymede reads a bit differently than both Clementine and Dreadnought, it is another strong entry in the series.

Captain and pirate Andan Cly has met a woman is and ready to leave his questionable business behind and settle down. Before he can do so however, he wants to make one last and very profitable run. The man in charge of Seattle's drug trade is asking him to ship a lot of equipment needed to keep the gas covered city from turning into a death trap. Andan has also received a request from a woman in New Orleans he has a history with. She is none too clear on what the job entails but together with the supply run, the pay of this job could make his retirement from piracy a real possibility. So, reluctantly, Andan leaves his love behind and sets out one more time to New Orleans, where he will make the acquaintance of a mysterious device known as Ganymede.

The previous two entries in the series the Subterranean novella Clementine and the novel Dreadnought, both published in 2010, read more or less like a high speed car chase. There is lots of frantic action in those novels that would not have been fitting for Ganymede. The Ganymede is a primitive kind of submarine, a slightly more advanced version of a historical craft known as the Hunley, one of the many historical details in the novel. With this machine, the designers hope to finally be able to convincingly blockade the Confederate trade routes and end the war that has been dragging on for two decades. If they can get it in the hands of the Union that is.

The development of the Ganymede has been a process of trail and error, in which error often means death. Although designed to keep the occupants both hidden and safe, the technical challenges of keeping people alive in such a hostile environment allow for very small margins of error. Priest uses that to build the pressure. Everything has to be done just so, and everything as to be done right the first time. Not getting it right means detection, suffocation or drowning and the crew of the Ganymede is well aware of that every step of the way. Some parts of the story are absolutely nerve wracking. Priest eventually releases all that pressure in the very exciting climax of the novel.

Besides Andan Cly, whom readers will already know from previous books, Priest introduces a new main character for the New Orleans part of the story. Josephine Early is a madam in New Orleans, running what is euphemistically called a boarding house for women. Like Brair, she is a middle-aged woman with a no nonsense attitude and definitely not afraid to get her hands dirty. Like many of the characters in this book she is of mixed white and African origin and keenly aware of how precarious her position in the Confederacy (where slavery has been abolished in most states in Priest's alternative history). Through Josephine we explore New Orleans, the heat and humility, a touch of voodoo and more than a bit of the French origin of the city. Ganymede contains some wonderfully atmospheric descriptions of the city, spiced with a number of fantastic Steampunk vehicles.

Josephine is also the link with what could be considered an overarching theme in these novels: the presence of zombies. I must admit I felt that this part of the plot didn't really fit in too well with the rest of the story. It is a complication to their mission with the Ganymede I suppose, but on its own, it does not offer a resolution of any kind. It might be a bridge to the next book though, as more people become aware of this growing threat and the need to do something about it. The whole thing made me wonder if Priest has plans to somehow join these episodes and have the characters tackle the problem more decisively. Or if we will indeed see an end the stalemate the Civil War is in. There is more than enough material for another few episodes anyway.

I guess Ganymede is still a book that can be read independently of the others but Priest lets a lot of characters return and puts in a bunch references to earlier events. The only major character who isn't at least mentioned is Maria Isabella Boyd, one of the main characters of Clementine. I'd say you definitely get more out of it if you have read the others but don't let that stop you from picking this volume up. Ganymede turned out to be not quite the story I was expecting, but once again Priest managed to mix the intoxicating ingredients of the Clockwork Century and a number of memorable characters into a fine novel. Fans of the series thus far, will definitely appreciate this offering.

Book Details
Title: Ganymede
Author: Cherie Priest
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 349
Year: 2011
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2946-2
First published: 2011

Dreadnought - Cherie Priest

Last year Cherie Priest had a big hit with her zombie steampunk novel Boneshaker. It got her award nominations and a deal for several more books in this Clockwork Century setting. Earlier this year the novella, or short novel, Clementine appeared from Subterranean and now Tor has released the second full novel in the series, Dreadnought. Given the success of the previous part, expectations were high. I guess this book is going to get it's share of mixed reviews. Although the setting is the same, Dreadnought is not a direct sequel, some of the characters from Boneshaker make a brief appearance but most of the novel is focussed on a new main character. I guess it can be read independently of the others but you probably get more out of it if you have read Boneshaker at least. It's also quite a different story, with the machine the book is named after, very prominent in the tale. I enjoyed Boneshaker a lot but I still think Dreadnought is the better book.

Vinita 'Mercy' Lynch is a nurse in one of the hospitals where the south tries to patch up its victims from the civil war battlefields. A civil war that has raged for two decades now, with no end in sight. Mercy's husband is a young man from across the border, they'd only been married for a few months when he went north to fight for the Republican side. Now, almost two years later, news arrived that he has died, not at the front line but in one of the prisoner of war camps. That is not the only shock that week that Mercy has to endure. A telegram arrives from the west coast. One sheriff Wilkes sends her a message that her father is seriously hurt and that his life is in danger. He has asked her to come see him in Seattle.

Mercy has not seen her father since she was a little girl and she isn't in the least tempted to undertake the long and dangerous journey to see a man who abandoned her. After talking to one of her patients she changes her mind though. It may be the last chance she'll get after all. Mercy resigns her position and with her savings and severance pay she buys tickets for the first leg of her journey. A trip by dirigible to Chattanooga, far enough from the front lines to be uneventful according to the captain. As it turns out, the war is quite a bit closer than Mercy would like. And her journey is just beginning.

In a way this book is a bit more like Clementine than Boneshaker. In Boneshaker we stayed in and around Seattle, where the war was far away and people mostly worried about their own unusual circumstances. Clementine shows us some more of the US in this alternate 19th century but due to the word limit Priest does not really flesh it out as well as she might have. In Dreadnought she has some more space to show us what is going on in the east. Priest's series is not a traditional alternate history. As far as I know there is no clear point of divergence, the author more or less rearranges some events. Some of the changes include a still independent Texas (informally allied with the Confederacy) and the mentioning of Diesel engines a decade before Rudolf Diesel patented his design. Another interesting detail is the abolition of slavery in most of the southern states during the 1870s. The history as Priest paints it does not strike me as the most realistic scenario, sorting out the differences with our history is still interesting. I suspect that people who know a bit more about the American Civil War era will get even more out of it.

Where Boneshaker had a few sections where the pace of the story dropped a bit, the pace is absolutely unrelenting in this novel. The story unfolds with the speed the Dreadnought itself (it is a nasty piece of war machinery on rails by the way). Once Mercy has boarded, she is in for the ride of her life. Travelling across the continent we get a much better view of the bigger picture, events that are only distant rumour in Boneshaker. The plot is a bit more complex than in the previous novel, with several developments in various parts of North America converging. Boneshaker undeniably has an emotionally powerful plot, with a mother trying to rescue her son, but I have to admit that the story in Dreadnought is more to my taste.

Both earlier tales in the Clockwork Century setting had strong female main characters and Dreadnought follows this example. Mercy is a bit younger than Briar and Maria but like the other two ladies she is definitely the no nonsense type. She does not fear the sight of blood or gunpowder to put it mildly and she has a very interesting bedside manner. One particularly fine example of that is shown in the scene where Mercy helps out at a Salvation Army hospital in exchange for a bed for the night. The contrast with the Salvation Army nurse couldn't be greater. There is one thing about her character that made me wonder though, she hardly takes any time at all to grieve. The late husband is perhaps a bit too much a device to explain why Mercy is out on her own in a time when decent ladies didn't go out unescorted.

One of the few things I didn't like about this book is the way Priest deals with racism. I think Priest is trying a little to hard to keep the racism of the time out of her books. It crops up a number of times but certainly not in the fashion one would expect. Even with slavery abolished, it was so ingrained in society that being black or Chinese or native American, was not a comfortable position to be in. When Priest refers to it, it is always at a distance. Making it a bit more prominent would not have hurt this novel.

Following up on such a successful first book is always challenging. I think Priest delivered an even stronger novel with Dreadnought. It combines the setting, steampunk elements and zombies that made the first novel such a fun read but also manages to expand the reader's view of her alternate history. It's one of those book that will keep you reading just because the excitement of the story never lets up. I liked Boneshaker a lot, I absolutely loved Dreadnought. I can't wait for the next Clockwork Century novel, Ganymede, which unfortunately for me, is not expected until the fall of 2011.

Book Details
Title: Dreadnought
Author: Cherie Priest
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 400
Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2578-5
First published: 2010

Clementine - Cherie Priest

Last year, Priest's novel Boneshaker (Tor, October 2009) took the Steampunk sub genre by storm. Her novel about an alternate history Seattle, poisoned by a mysterious gas and plagued by zombies was very well received and is one of the novels still in the race for the Hugo Award. With that kind of success more stories in this Clockwork Century setting were to be expected. Earlier this year Subterranean already published to story Tanglefoot online (it can be read here) and this month they added the novella Clementine to it. I understand that Priest has also sold a number of other Clockwork Century novels to Tor. Her second full length novel in this setting, Dreadnought, is expected in September.

Clementine is probably set shortly after the events in Boneshaker. It features a number of minor character form the novel but you do not need to read it to enjoy this book. Set in an alternate version of the US where the civil war has dragged on for two decades, both sides are looking for something that can break the stalemate and enable them to strike a decisive blow. Somehow the dirigible Free Crow of smuggler, pirate and sometimes bank robber Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey is central to the plans of one of the parties. His honestly stolen ship is taken by a party colleagues, hastily renamed Clementine and taken east with unknown cargo. Hainey is about to let this theft go unpunished.

In the mean time southern spy Maria Isabelle Boyd, finds that the worst that could possibly happen to a spy has occurred. Her actions on behalf of the Confederacy has gained her a level of fame that makes further covert operations almost impossible. To make matters worse her loyalties are questioned. Cut loose from her employer, Boyd tries her luck in the north where the infamous Pinkerton National Detective Agency has offered her a job. Her first assignment is to make sure a certain dirigible arrives on schedule and delivers goods to a Sanatorium. It looks innocent but reading between the lines Boyd get the impression the cargo is deemed vital to the Union war effort. Will old loyalties prevail over pragmatism?

It's quite unusual to have works in the same setting published by two different publishers without getting into an argument with one of them. Tor seems to prefer books of novel length though, I don't think they've published anything recent that is under a hundred thousand words in quite a while. At 201 generously spaced pages Clementine is well below that although I would not be surprised if it pushes the word limit for novellas. That being said, it is quite a different creature than the novel Boneshaker. It has a higher density of action scenes, including some very interesting areal combat and a number of gunfights.

Priest picked a couple of very unlikely heroes for this tale. Hainey is an escaped slave and criminal who doesn't have any moral objections to blowing whoever happens to be in the way of him regaining his beloved dirigible away with an absurdly large gun named Rattler. He's wanted in both the Union and the Confederacy and he's very much aware of how that limits his manoeuvrability. Boyd on the other hand has been fiercely defending the cause of the Confederacy, a state that allows slavery, and seriously considers capturing Hainey and deliver him to her old employer to get back in their good graces. She is also not above shooting people if it means getting the job done. Neither of the main characters are suitable as role models to say the least. Personally I can appreciate a bit of moral ambiguity in a novel but some readers will no doubt be more comfortable with Brair and quest to get her son back.

Characters willing to do a little damage achieve their goals do make for an action-packed novel. Where in Boneshaker the dirigibles were mostly part of the scenery, we get to see quite a lot of them here. I must admit I fail to see the wisdom of a combination of steam engines and hydrogen filled balloons, or mounting them with guns for that matter. Predictably, large explosions are the result. On the whole I liked this more condensed version of the Clockwork Century better than Boneshaker though. The novel is a fine piece of writing but it does contain a fairly straightforward story. Perhaps not enough to justify the length of Boneshaker. Clementine is more tightly written. The pace is relentless but Priest does manage to flesh out the two main characters well enough to make them interesting.

Do not expect a very complex story when reading this. Clementine is a fast and exciting read. Something the whet the appetite before Dreadnought hits the shelves. Personally, I don't understand why Tor let this one pass. It is bound to appeal to readers who liked Boneshaker. Thankfully there are still publishers interested in work that doesn't conform to the big fat fantasy novel standards. Subterranean did a wonderful job on the cover art (by Jon Foster) and design as well. For those of you who have not been able to get your hands on a hardcover, I hear they are almost sold out, there will be a paperback edition sometime next year. Now or next year, if you do see it in a book store don't hesitate, Clementine is a very good read.

Book Details
Title: Clementine
Author: Cherie Priest
Publisher: Suterranean Press
Pages: 201
Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-59606-308-2
First published: 2010

Boneshaker - Cherie Priest

Boneshaker is my first encounter with Cherie Priest's writing. I saw an online giveaway for this book a while ago and the description intrigued me enough to enter. Didn't win of course, but the title stuck with me and last week I decided to buy a copy. It's also something of an introduction into steampunk subgenre for me, All the Windwracked Stars by Elizabeth Bear is just about the only novel I have read that could be considered steampunk. Boneshaker is the first of a series of books Priest plans to write in an alternate history setting called the Clockwork Century (the series has its own website). Although the novel leaned on the setting a little too much at some points, I thought it was a very interesting read. I absolutely am going to have to get better acquainted with this subgenre in general and Priest's writing in particular.

In an alternate Seatle in 1863, an experiment with a revolutionary piece of mining equipment known as the Boneshaker goes horribly wrong. The inventor, Dr. Blue, manages to wreck much of the city centre in one destructive run. Not only does he totally destroy the town, he also releases a toxic gas, leaving the city uninhabitable. Those exposed to this blight turn into ravenous walking corpses, haunting to city in search of flesh. To protect themselves from the danger, the survivors erect a wall to close off the contaminated area. Many leave, but those who choose to remain close to the wall build a new city, known as the Outskirts.

Some sixteen years later Dr. Blue's widow, Briar Wilkes is trying to make end meet and provide for her son Zeke. As the wife of the man who destroyed the city, life is hard for Briar and her son. To make matters worse, Briar's father is considered a criminal by many of the city's inhabitants for releasing a number of prisoners before the blight could get to them. He died in the process and has turned into something of a hero for the petty criminals in town. Having grown up without knowing either of the two men who, to a large extend, have determined his life, Zeke is determined to find out more about them. His mother is not keen to discuss the matter and that leaves Zeke with only one option, go over the wall and explore the city for himself.

The more traditional approach to creating an alternate history is to pick a point of divergence. A single important event going another way that it has in history as we know it. Priest rearranges history of a much larger scale in this novel. The story is set around 1880 but the civil war is still raging in the east. Stonewall Jackson managed not to get himself killed and is directing the confederate forces with superior skill. Great Britain has gotten involved in the conflict and has broken the union blockade (I must admit that one seemed very unlikely to me but I found out it was considered at one point) and Texas has grown rich on oil, which has been discovered decades earlies. Airships are widely used for transportation and military purposes, (Priest slips once by calling them Zeppelins, the man they are named after did not really get going on this project until the 1890s) and a large number of exotic, often steam powered machines (including the Boneshaker) are in mentioned in the book. She also moves the Klondike gold rush back a couple of decades to explain the much larger population of Seattle in her alternate world. In short, there's quite a bit of remodelling. Priest does not explore the what if question so much as fit the setting to the need of the story.

The story itself is not all that complicated. Briar goes in search of Zeke and both have to overcome a number of obstacles to stay alive. There are some twists and turns in the plot of course, but Priest does not complicate things with multiple plot lines or large casts. In fact, early on in the book I had my doubts if there was enough story to keep the novel going for four hundred pages. It turned out there was plenty. The setting is obviously quite important to this book but the character of Brair is what really carries the story. Priest manages to find a good mix of emotions for a woman in Briar's position. Determination, guilt, desperation and courage, Briar has it all and combined with the unanswered questions about her past, it makes her into a great character.

The good characterization doesn't stop there though, Briar is surrounded by a number of very interesting secondary characters. Down town Seattle is not as deserted as you might think. It is home to an assortment of strange people, keeping themselves alive by applying a strange mix of technologies. Lucy, Miss Angeline and the mysteries Dr. Minnericht appealed to me in particular. Their world is a dark one indeed but Priest manages to make clear why each of them is willing to accept the conditions inside the wall.

Boneshaker is a great mix of steampunk, alternate history and ..well.. zombies. I must admit I don't usually go for the monster tales but their presence does create and acute sense of danger in the story that would be hard to match otherwise. The author exceeded my expectations in weaving all these elements into an exciting novel. At first I though the plot a little light but in the last couple of chapters Priest managed to make up for that. This book turned out to be a very good read, one of the best I have read this year. I'm looking forward to finding out what other stories she has in store for us in the Clockwork Century.

Book Details
Title: Boneshaker
Author: Cherie Priest
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 416
Year: 2009
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-7653-1841-1
First published: 2009