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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 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.