by Cherie Priest.
Talk about the right book at the right time: Â a steampunk adventure with zombies. Â There will never be a better time for this book. Â Never. Â All she had to do was make sure she wrote the book well enough not to shoot herself in the foot. Â And it’s Cherie Priest, so you know that isn’t going to happen. Â (Or, if you don’t, you’ll turn around and read the Eden Moore series before you go any further.)
Hey. Â It’s not Shakespeare (I said, praising her with faint damns). Â But it’s solid and it’s good and I would toss this at anybody, whether they read SF/F or not. Â 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. Â I’d give it to my dad, who doesn’t read that much. Â I’d give it to my mom, who generally looks askew at SF.
Quite fun.
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.
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.