by Ray Wallace

Boneshaker

by Cherie Priest
Tor Books

In the late 1800’s, during the early days of the American Civil War, prospectors migrated en masse to the Pacific northwest in search of gold. By this point, most of the gold had already been pulled from the earth throughout previously bountiful California. And so the eyes of the prospectors turned elsewhere, further and further north. Alaska. But much of the gold, it was presumed, was trapped beneath a thick layer of snow and ice. So a contest was held. A very sizable sum of money would go to the inventor who could create a machine that would most easily and effectively cut its way through the ice to the gold hidden below. Enter Dr. Leviticus Blue, master inventor, and his Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine. It was a monstrous, masterful piece of engineering that on its first trial run went careening out of control beneath the banking district of the young but flourishing city of Seattle, Washington. The destruction was great. Many people died in the chaos. And a gas called the blight was released from beneath the earth, a gas that turned those exposed to it into the walking dead. Zombies. Murderous, hungry creatures that craved the flesh of the living. A giant wall was built around the afflicted area to contain the blight gas and the roving dead. And near the wall, some semblance of society managed to continue on.

At least, this is the way history is presented at the start of Cherie Priest’s acclaimed steampunk-horror-fantasy novel, Boneshaker.

The story centers around a woman named Briar Wilkes and her son, Ezekiel. They live a hard life near the wall, harder than most as they must endure a special type of outcast status due to the fact that they are, respectively, Leviticus Blue’s widow and only child. Briar works at a local water treatment plant, trying to make enough money to keep her home and raise her teenage son as best she can. Time and circumstance have hardened her, and she and Ezekiel seem to drift farther and farther apart as time goes by. So much so that she has no idea of the plan taking shape in the boy’s head, one that will involve him entering the walled-off portion of the city in search of evidence that will prove his father was not the monster everyone now believes him to be. By doing so, he will rewrite history and make life easier for himself and his mother.

The narrative jumps back and forth, at times following Ezekiel and his foolish quest to clear his family’s name, then switching to his mother and her efforts to rescue him from the dangers beyond the wall. Of which there are many. The undead, or “rotters” as the locals refer to them, is one such danger and a big one, no doubt. But there are others, to be sure. It’s been fifteen years since the wall’s gone up and the streets and buildings are in all manner of disrepair. There are people living within the walled off area too, many of them unsavory types who have chosen to take up residence within the ruined part of the city for any number of less than honorable reasons. And there is the blight gas which forces anyone spending even a moment out-of-doors to breathe through the filters of a gas mask.

Ezekiel goes under the wall through an abandoned tunnel which collapses behind him, requiring him to discover another way out. Briar goes over the wall with the help of a group of pirates and the airship they use to roam the skies. Each has their share of death-defying adventures from one chapter to the next of this unique and entertaining novel. They also meet a cast of memorable and colorful characters along the way including a giant of a man with a device that can temporarily stun large numbers of trotters, a woman with two robotic arms, and the fearsome and mysterious Dr. Minnericht who bears an unsettling resemblance to someone from Briar’s past.