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I'm always in the mood for a good alternate-history novel, and one with steampunk underpinnings is even better. Sixteen years ago, in Washington Territory, possibly-mad scientist Leviticus Blue built a machine to break the Alaskan ice to reach the gold underneath. Instead, the Boneshaker tore Seattle apart and ruptured some underground seam that began leaking poisonous, heavy yellow gas. The gas can kill you, but what's worse is that it doesn't let you stay dead. The survivors built an enormous wall around most of downtown Seattle to keep the undead, and the gas, at bay, but life on the frontier didn't get any easier. It's worse for Briar Wilkes, Blue's widow, and her son Ezekiel (Zeke), born after Blue's death; many believe Blue's disaster was intentional, and Briar was (and is) suspected of complicity. Zeke has never believed it, and sneaks into the walled-off city to prove it, and Briar has to follow to get him back alive.

I love that this is a story about a mother and son and their relationship. Through most of the book, chapters alternate between Briar's and Zeke's point of view, and Priest handles the alternating viewpoints very well. I never felt impatient at being forced to sit through one person's part of the story when I wanted to see what the other was doing. All the secondary characters were interesting, too; I liked it when someone from the beginning of the story showed up later, especially Andan Cly and the Princess. It's also a very exciting story, mostly because the zombies ("rotters") crank up the tension as Briar and Zeke try to find their answers. The rotters are your basic nouveau zombies, super-fast and super-strong, but the story isn't about them, so they don't need to be innovative. The scenes where Briar or Zeke are running away from them are very tense.

The plot is well-defined and well-paced, so it's a good story, but I think what makes it excellent is Priest's worldbuilding. She's changed a number of historical details (the Civil War has lasted for 20 years and is still going on; gold was discovered much earlier, so settlement and development are accelerated) to support the story she wants to tell, but she's given a lot of thought to the rationale for and the consequences of those changes. The Civil War, for example, has lasted so long because the South has railroads and an infrastructure that better supports their military. And the scenes in Seattle are simply creepy; it's like late-Victorian London with its pea-souper fogs, with dozens of Rippers around every corner. The descriptions are evocative enough that I'd have liked it even if the characters and story weren't as good as they are. Excellent beginning to a series.