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Boneshaker: A Novel of the Clockwork Century

by Cherie Priest

A sealed Seattle and a family reckoning

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A sealed Seattle and a family reckoning

Set in an alternate Civil War-era Pacific Northwest, the novel imagines a mining invention that devastates Seattle and releases a gas that transforms the living into the undead. Sixteen years later, the ruined city is enclosed behind a wall, while Briar Wilkes raises her son outside it. When Ezekiel crosses into the sealed city on a mission to challenge the accepted history of his father, Briar must follow. Steampunk machinery, undead inhabitants, air pirates, and armed refugees shape the hazards of the city, while the family’s connection to the catastrophe gives the adventure its personal stakes.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Adults interested in steampunk science fiction and alternate-history settings.
  • Readers who enjoy adventure premises involving undead threats and hazardous enclosed cities.
  • Those interested in stories that connect family ties with the consequences of a technological disaster.

Themes

Technological catastropheFamily and reputationContested historySurvival in a sealed city

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska's ice. Thus was Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue's widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

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