Boneshaker

I just finished Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. The one at the library is actually still checked out and I think I'd be the next one... but I now own my own copy. It came about something like this. First, I was going to question in my last post if there were even steampunks in Iowa. Then I solved that by Googling "steampunk iowa" and discovered there actually was a steampunk group in Iowa, a relatively new one by the looks of it. And they were having a meeting Saturday night and discussing Boneshaker. Not having anything to contribute in the way of costume or show and tell, I wanted to contribute to the discussion, at least saying I'd started reading it.

But I didn't really have these intentions and wasn't even sure I was going to attend the meeting when we went out for lunch. I wanted to stop in at Barnes and Noble because that and Scheels are the only places really worth going in the mall. I picked up the paperback version of River Marked, the most recent Mercy Thompson novel and the only one I was missing from my paperback collection, so I snagged that. And then I found Boneshaker and it was just so compelling that I get the book and start it and I love books and reviews had said this one was pretty good, so possibly worth owning.

David said, "I don't mind if you get it," and the book was pretty much mine thereafter.

I spent the afternoon reading it and was maybe one-third through when I went to the meeting. I did in fact end up going to the meeting. I was scared I'd meet a bunch of geeks and decide steampunk was just a bunch of geeks, and that did, in fact happen. But, by the end, when I was playing a mechanic girl with dreadlocks named Branna in a D&D style role playing game and having the sort of "I'm having SO much fun" feeling I get from drinking one to many, I rediscovered that I was a geek and these were my people.

I'll start planning my costume now. All that aside, they were really nice and I might continue meeting with them, if only to play the role-playing game. Now that I don't have people to talk to at work, it'd be nice to have friends elsewhere.

I'm such a nerd.

But on to Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. This was the book she wanted to be a sort of example of steampunk that people could point at and say "That's steampunk." It is a zombie thriller where zombies, created by poisonous gas, are trapped inside walls in the middle of 19th century Seattle. A boy goes into the old city and meets the few crazy people who are trying to make a life inside the poisonous gas and zombie-infested streets while he searches for clues to his past and his father who was at least partially responsible for the whole epidemic. His father at the very least had built a machine called the Boneshaker, a drill that collapsed blocks of the city. Most people could only guess if he was dead or alive or responsible for the leaking gas and robbery at the city banks and subsequent death and destruction. The boy's mother figures out where he goes and goes in after him, braving the streets herself to try and find him, but meeting different people. The book is one of those where he struggles forward without knowing she is looking and she is searching frantically, trying to figure out where he would've gone.

Thankfully, there isn't much of the generally overused, they meet the same person, but make up a name and that person doesn't know who they are and they leave without knowing it was the person they were looking for or they went to the same place at different times and make all the wrong conclusions... it isn't that frustrating. There is the frantic searching, but the delays and routes and people make sense. His mother can't keep struggling that direction because they were attacked by "rotters" and had to take off.

Overall, I quite liked it. The writing was good (finally) and the story was interesting and made sense. (Spoiler) Even the end, where they decide to stay in the ruined city with the people who helped them all along, made sense in more than a "Aww, that's so cute" way.

The steampunk part I almost thought was understated, which I suppose is better than overstated. It had it's funky gizmos, airships, mechanical limbs, goggles, all sorts of things, but they all made perfect sense. Maybe that's what good steampunk is where the inventions all have a place and aren't the center of the story.

To be honest, I read it more like a zombie thriller than a steampunk book. The stuff you'd see, conversations they had, they all fit within a zombie-infested city as much as a steampunk world.

But, they are making a movie. And the more I think about how the sealed doors and filters and clothes and inventions would appear visually, the more excited I am about it. The movie can have the true visual ringing of steampunk that is easy to forget while reading.

Overall, good book. And good meeting.