Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Last week I finished Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. It was inspired by the underground of Seattle (created when the city raised the street level and burried the bottom stories of several buildings), which I saw a few years ago during a friend's wedding weekend.

Plot Summary: Here's the summary from the official Macmillian website ---

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 achine 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.

My Reaction: This book was recommended by a friend of mine from college and I definitely appreciate the recommendation!

I have to say, though, lots of the short summaries I read talked about this being a zombie book. I didn't think that was so much the emphasis. There were definitely some "rotters" playing the role of zombies within the destroyed version of Seattle, but I thought the Blight gas, itself, was a more sinister villan. I guess I've just gotten to the point where I expect my zombie fiction to have an undead guest showing up every couple of pages (Pride & Prejudice & Zombies).

To me, this was much more a book about trying to live in the shadow of a ruined city and environmental disaster. I liked the juxtaposition of the proper (but passive-agressive and hateful) residents of the Outskirts civilization and the more straightforward (and often more friendly) pirates, looters, and saloon-keepers within the destroyed city, itself.

I liked Blair quite a bit, but kept getting annoyed at her son's lack of respect for the dangerous situations he kept wandering into. I know he's just a teenager, but serious lack of self-preservation skills for a kid who was in theory having to take care of himself while his mom worked long hours at the water purification factory.

Bottom Line: I'm a fan and will keep my eyes out for another book in this series.