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Dreadnought details the journey of a young Civil War Nurse from one coast of America to the other. As this is an alternate history, steam punk inspired book, this travel entails dirigibles, diesel or steam powered mecha, deadly armored trains, and zombies. The Civil War has been waged for 15 years in this universe, and was not, as you would have supposed, fought over Slavery, but State's Rights.

I haven't read the other books in the series, and perhaps that's my mistake. The reason for the long term duration of the Civil War is never explained, and slavery is never brought up until a hundred pages in when Nurse Mercy meets a black woman on a train. I felt that was a really glaring error and spoiled the first half of the book for me. Maybe it's too PC for me to expect any Civil War story to have black characters.

I wasn't filled with awe, nor did I tremble with fear during the descriptions of these secret-weapon locomotives, because well, they're TRAINS. Blow up the track. Done.

Although there's lots of action, and Nurse Mercy undergoes increasingly bizarre adventures, the book drags. The climax to the over arching mystery that follows Mercy through out her journey is as obvious as a freight train. Mercy is intelligent and spunky, but she doesn't seem to have much of a personality beyond her willingness to curse in extreme situations. And as there are no other consistent characters throughout her story, it's hard to care how the story will end.

The last quarter of the book has a pretty enthusiastic train race and shootout, but there's no emotional punch to the end of the story, and Mercy walks in to what feels like the next book of the series in the final pages. There's no emotional impact when she meets her father, and the author cuts the scene off abruptly. After all, that's not what the book was about, it was about the setup for the NEXT book. Only, I don't actually care to see how this Civil War works itself out, because there were no characters for me to care about in THIS book.