Book Review: Boneshaker

by Cherie Priest.

Talk about the right book at the right time:  a steampunk adventure with zombies.  There will never be a better time for this book.  Never.  All she had to do was make sure she wrote the book well enough not to shoot herself in the foot.  And it’s Cherie Priest, so you know that isn’t going to happen.  (Or, if you don’t, you’ll turn around and read the Eden Moore series before you go any further.)

Hey.  It’s not Shakespeare (I said, praising her with faint damns).  But it’s solid and it’s good and I would toss this at anybody, whether they read SF/F or not.  It’s even about the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy, and I would give it to the fifteen-year-old boys without feeling embarrassed that they’d think I was a fuddy duddy.  I’d give it to my dad, who doesn’t read that much.  I’d give it to my mom, who generally looks askew at SF.

Quite fun.

2 thoughts on “Book Review: Boneshaker”

  1. My problems I had with the book are small — the kid was really incredibly unevenly portrayed: typical kid in the middle, whining and useless in the middle, then cool and hyper-competent once he reunites with his mom.

    (Pro tip: teenagers do not get (or act) cooler and more in control when they rejoin their parents.)

    Aside from that, there is a problem with out-of-sync timelines between Mom and kid toward the end that is handled really sloppily (let’s just knock her out in a scene we never describe, or even hint might happen, to make up the time).

    But yes: on the balance, a fine story.

  2. I agree, except the boy went from supercompetent, to dragged along, to supercompetent. He got in, didn’t he? And I would portray the story arc as “Overconfident, knocked on his ass, pulling things together.” He’s the one who found his mom, not the other way around.

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