This book had such an intriguing premise. And it isn't a bad book, but I personally didn't find it a great book either.
The premise is a sort of alterThis book had such an intriguing premise. And it isn't a bad book, but I personally didn't find it a great book either.
The premise is a sort of alternate world set during WWI where corpses can be reanimated. The story is Anne Markham who follows in her father's footsteps and easily exceeds his "accomplishments" in creating reanimated automatons, which the Allies call Talosites. The Germans have similar abilities.
It is, as I said, a fascinating premise. There are some great images. The story is somewhat compelling in (view spoiler)[documenting Anne's obsession and willingness to make "progress" with this technology where essentially flesh gets reused, patched together, etc. (hide spoiler)]
But to me, I struggled a bit with the narrative. It's a short book and it should have held my attention more but I kept getting lost in a sense because the ideas and paragraphs sort of jumped ahead a bit. I kept wondering, wait... how did we get from Point A paragraph to Point B paragraph? There were too many time where I was left wondering what details I was missing.
These could just be my own subjective impressions. But that was how this book hit me. The ideas will stick with me. The story itself... not so much....more
As tiresome as I am finding Sicarius's behavior, I am still enjoying the series and liked this installment. For some reason I cannot put my finger on,As tiresome as I am finding Sicarius's behavior, I am still enjoying the series and liked this installment. For some reason I cannot put my finger on, I did not find it maybe quite as engaging as the prior forays into Amaranthe's world of steampunky intrigue, but this was good. It had a very good cliffhanger ending and boyo, am I intrigued to see how THAT one plays out. ...more
Boneshaker is going to appeal to a broad base of steampunk and fantasy fans. I liked it, but didn't love it.
Set in a steampunk alternate history in thBoneshaker is going to appeal to a broad base of steampunk and fantasy fans. I liked it, but didn't love it.
Set in a steampunk alternate history in the early days of the American Civil War, the story moves quickly to a huge disaster called the "Boneshaker" tunneling machine that transforms the up and coming city of Seattle into a toxic disaster zone called the Blight. Gases escape from the earth, killing some, making zombies of others. No help comes because at this point Washington is only a territory, not a state.
The two main characters are Briar, and her 15 year old boy Ezekiel. They are the spouse and son of the Boneshaker machine that caused the disaster. They get out of the city, which is then walled up to try to contain the Blight. For those who didn't make it out or decided to stay, well, kinda sucks to be them.
Anyway, this is a different take on the unfolding of the American Civil War. It has a post-apocalyptic feel mixed into the steampunk elements. It's got some very colorful characters. It's got lots of action and adventure that moves along. The setting I love, reinterpreting Seattle as wasteland populated by flesh eating zombies and hard-cases. The narration in the audiobook makes the language come alive. it has interesting plot twists.
So here's why this ended up only 3 stars for me. At first I was totally loving the story and the writing. At first...
Then there was a narrative technique that I really didn't care for. And then it came up again. And again. And again. And then slightly different, but again. The writing of it has a lot of conjunction sentences that I felt made it awkward and clunky. For example, Brian (I think it was her) puts on some protective goggles. It reads, "[i]t fit, but not very well." Then Ezekiel at another point is trying to escape some baddies with an ally born of convenience and then the ally, who has an injury is related as saying "[b]um hip or no, he could run, but he couldn't run quietly." Okay. So basically the goggles didn't fit her well, right? So why not just say that? And the dude running, okay so why doesn't it show me how the ally's awkward running created noise the drew the baddies' attention. I fully realize this could just be a pet peeve and a super subjective nit-picky gripe. And I don't mind a little bit of this, but this sort of writing kind of became the predominant narrative technique and I felt it made the narrative awkward. It also creates POV problems. Either the person is perceiving an event or circumstance or they are not.
Just my opinion. I am sure there are tons of people who will like this story. And at the end of the day, this was certainly interesting enough for me to check out the next book in the series. Maybe the writing style will grow on me....more
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