Summary: Boneshaker derives its title from the Bone-Shaking Drill Engine, a device designed to give Russian prospectors a leg up in the race for Klondike gold. Unfortunately, there was one hitch: On its trial run, the Boneshaker went haywire and, long story short, turned much of Seattle into a city of the dead. Now, 16 years later, a teenage boy decides to find out what is behind that mysterious wall. Can his mother save him in time? Zombie lit of the first order.
summary found on goodreads
My Review: This book is awesome. Need I say more? :) Really though. This book was fantastic. The zombies are oober creepy but not the focus of the story. They are a great plot device. Right when everything seems to be going well, BAM ZOMBIE ATTACK. But the zombies aren't the bad guys... The humans are!
So Zeek sneaks into Seattle to try and prove that his dad wasn't a criminal mastermind who purposefully destroyed the city, even though it's crawling with zombies. His mom (Briar) races in after him to save his life. They each in turn find people who are crazy enough to be living in Seattle. On purpose. Yeah. I would choose to live in a zombie infested city filled with a noxious gas that kills and reanimates you in seconds upon breathing it in... Not. Did I mention that several of the people living in the city are missing body parts because they were injured in the Blight (noxious gas) and had to remove limbs to keep from turning zombie?? Broken flesh equals bad news! Also they have to wear face masks whenever outside, be absolutely silent, and incredibly stealthy in order to remain alive. Which obviously leads to them needing insane filters to drag healthy safe air from miles above the city into their underground, tomblike homes and keep out the deadly air right above them. Insanity! But. Makes for a very exciting, grungy, cool book. I love the feel of the steampunk books. They make you feel grungy and dirty the whole time. Reading this book you are on the edge of your seat wondering when the next round of zombie destruction will occur. The story is told mostly from Briar's perspective with inserts from Zeek. You follow both of them as they dodge zombies, search for a past that is uncertain and future that is even less certain. It is an action-packed, edge of your seat kind of book that I absolutely loved. Check it out!
Dreadnought *****Companion books to Boneshaker*
Book Type: Steampunk, Adventure, Zombie
Summary: Nurse Mercy Lynch is elbows deep in bloody laundry at a war hospital in Richmond, Virginia, when Clara Barton comes bearing bad news: Mercy's husband has died in a POW camp. On top of that, a telegram from the west coast declares that her estranged father is gravely injured, and he wishes to see her. Mercy sets out toward the Mississippi River. Once there, she'll catch a train over the Rockies and--if the telegram can be believed--be greeted in Washington Territory by the sheriff, who will take her to see her father in Seattle.
Reaching the Mississippi is a harrowing adventure by dirigible and rail through war-torn border states. When Mercy finally arrives in St. Louis, the only Tacoma-bound train is pulled by a terrifying Union-operated steam engine called the Dreadnought. Reluctantly, Mercy buys a ticket and climbs aboard.
What ought to be a quiet trip turns deadly when the train is beset by bushwhackers, then vigorously attacked by a band of Rebel soldiers. The train is moving away from battle lines into the vast, unincorporated west, so Mercy can't imagine why they're so interested. 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.
summary found on goodreads
My Review: This book is a companion book to Boneshaker. The second book in this series is called Clementine, but it pretty much doesn't exist... Basically it is impossible to find. But you don't need it. This story is great all by it's self. That is something that is really cool about these books, they all take place in the same world and time period. But the characters are all different. You don't have to read any other book in the series to really understand the story you're reading. It's great! This book also has a strong female lead. She is fearless and intelligent. She is traveling across the country on her own in a dangerous and scary world. She experiences terrifying odds while trying to reach the father she barely knows. It was a blast following her across the country during a steampunk, zombie infested war! Cherie Priest is awesome, her books are so much fun to read, they're well written, engaging, exciting, suspenseful, and enriched with a great cast. Awesome book. Love it.
Book Type: Steampunk, Adventure, Zombie
Summary: The air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter. Although he’s happy to run alcohol guns wherever the money’s good, he doesn’t think the world needs more sap, or its increasingly ugly side-effects. But becoming legit is easier said than done, and Cly’s first legal gig—a supply run for the Seattle Underground—will be paid for by sap money.
New Orleans is not Cly’s first pick for a shopping run. He loved the Big Easy once, back when he also loved a beautiful mixed-race prostitute named Josephine Early—but that was a decade ago, and he hasn’t looked back since. Jo’s still thinking about him, though, or so he learns when he gets a telegram about a peculiar piloting job. It’s a chance to complete two lucrative jobs at once, one he can’t refuse. He sends his old paramour a note and heads for New Orleans, with no idea of what he’s in for—or what she wants him to fly.
But he won’t be flying. Not exactly. Hidden at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain lurks an astonishing war machine, an immense submersible called the Ganymede. This prototype could end the war, if only anyone had the faintest idea of how to operate it…. If only they could sneak it past the Southern forces at the mouth of the Mississippi River… If only it hadn’t killed most of the men who’d ever set foot inside it.
But it’s those “if onlys” that will decide whether Cly and his crew will end up in the history books, or at the bottom of the ocean.
summary found on goodreads
My Review: I have really enjoyed Cherie Priest's books, but this one was a little different for me. One of the main characters is a prostitute. Granted Cherie Priest doesn't delve into those details too much, but it is a big part of the story... I did really like her as a character, and the other main character is endearing... But other than that, the story was just really slow. The zombies are barely in the book... The action is minimal... It's just not as exciting as the other books. It's written well as always and the story is interesting... It just takes forever for anything exciting to happen and it doesn't last very long. But the ending hints at more stories to come that are more focused on the zombie epidemic... So maybe those will be more of what I'm looking for!
by Cherie Priest
Book Type: Steampunk, Adventure, Zombie
Summary: Rector “Wreck ‘em” Sherman was orphaned as a toddler in the Blight of 1863, but that was years ago. Wreck has grown up, and on his eighteenth birthday, he’ll be cast out out of the orphanage.
And Wreck’s problems aren’t merely about finding a home. He’s been quietly breaking the cardinal rule of any good drug dealer and dipping into his own supply of the sap he sells. He’s also pretty sure he’s being haunted by the ghost of a kid he used to know—Zeke Wilkes, who almost certainly died six months ago. Zeke would have every reason to pester Wreck, since Wreck got him inside the walled city of Seattle in the first place, and that was probably what killed him. Maybe it’s only a guilty conscience, but Wreck can’t take it anymore, so he sneaks over the wall.
The walled-off wasteland of Seattle is every bit as bad as he’d heard, chock-full of the hungry undead and utterly choked by the poisonous, inescapable yellow gas. And then there's the monster. Rector's pretty certain that whatever attacked him was not at all human—and not a rotter, either. Arms far too long. Posture all strange. Eyes all wild and faintly glowing gold and known to the locals as simply "The Inexplicables."
In the process of tracking down these creatures, Rector comes across another incursion through the wall -- just as bizarre but entirely attributable to human greed. It seems some outsiders have decided there's gold to be found in the city and they're willing to do whatever it takes to get a piece of the pie unless Rector and his posse have anything to do with it.
summary found on goodreads
My Review: This book was better than Ganymede for me. It had more action and adventure. However, there were hardly any zombies, which was kind of disappointing. But I like how it pulled together the first 3 books. Most of the characters from previous books are in this novel, which is fun to see. The main character was not my favorite. He's such a punk, he drove me a bit nuts... But he's a teenager who has had a difficult life up to this point, so I forgave him his flaws... at least a little bit. :) The inexplicable was pretty crazy. It was fun to have a new monster in these stories, at least for a while. And the bad guys in this story were new characters, so that was interesting as well. The ending to this book left it open to a great follow up. I look forward to the next one. I'm sure it will be just as exciting as the first two once again. Yay!
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