Boneshaker

By: Cherie Priest

Narrated by: Wil Wheaton, Kate Reading

Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

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 16 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.

©2009 Cherie Priest (P)2010 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Intelligent, exceptionally well written and showcasing a phenomenal strong female protagonist who embodies the complexities inherent in motherhood, this yarn is a must-read for the discerning steampunk fan." ( Publishers Weekly)

Seattle at it's most interesting!

Briar Wilkes is the widow of a mad man and great inventor, the late Dr. Blue. She and her teenage son, Ezekiel, must live with the everlasting shame of the horrible disaster Dr. Blue’s mining engine (Boneshaker) caused to downtown Seattle. Blight gas was released all those years ago, turning hundreds of people into the walking dead before that section of the city could be walled off. But now Ezekiel, on the cusp of manhood, goes in search of answers and Briar is hot on his heels. Set in the 1860s Pacific Northwest, this alternate steampunk history will keep you glued to the story.

This was my first Cherie Priest book but will not be my last. The story opens by dropping us into Briar’s life and we pick up the history as we go along. Briar has secrets and lots of folks want to know if her husband, Dr. Blue, is truly dead, including her son. Hence, Ezekiel heads off on his own to find some answers. Of course, this means going into the walled off, deadly gas zone. The folks outside the wall have so many stories about those stuck on the inside, but Ezekiel and his mom are about find out the truth of the matter.

And that is when it gets really interesting. The folks inside are rotting slowly. And there are those who have gone completely zombie. But for the most part, there is still a society of folks trying to scrape by living in underground Seattle. There’s all sorts of requirements to staying save, taking in as little gas as possible, so it’s complicated. It was fascinating to see how this society worked, and the response to Dr. Blue’s widow.

Eventually, Briar has to make a tough trade with guy who runs the underground gas zone. Plus she then has to decide whether or not to tell her son the truth. It was so intense! Toss in some airships, a few crazy weapons, a few handicap folks with mechanical bits, and you have a great story.

The Narration: Wil Wheaton and Kate Reading did a great job. Most of the story is told through Briar’s eyes, so we hear more of Reading. Wheaton was awesome as a confused, somewhat angry teenager. Both had distinct voices for both female and male characters.

Great Book, Great Readers

This is my first review, but I just have to weigh in to contradict some of the people who have been suggesting that the narration of this book is somehow inferior. Don't believe it. There's room for personal preference, certainly, but both narrators were excellent, and I didn't notice or mind any minor discrepancies in how they voiced some of the overlapping characters. In fact, I thought that both Kate Reading and Wil Wheaton did a great job of bringing their characters to life.


As for the book itself, I loved it. The genre lives in its own category--it isn't really sci fi, it isn't a bookified zombie movie, it isn't history, and there isn't any romance. I haven't read much Steampunk, but I'm guessing this is a pretty good example of it. The city of alternate-history Seattle lives and breathes in the story, almost like one of the characters, and you can't help but fall in love with the hellish place. The characters are realistic and interesting, and the story keeps you wanting more.


I hope you listen and enjoy!

A Well-Read Mother-Son Steampunk Zombie Story

I found Boneshaker to be entertaining, suspenseful, involving, moving, humorous, and well-read by Kate Reading and Wil Wheaton. In the story Briar Wilkes goes searching for her spunky and ignorant son Zeke in an alternate history, never-ending Civil War-era downtown Seattle encircled by a 200-foot wall enclosing a nightmarish surface poisoned by "Blight" gas and overrun by ravenous man-eating zombie "Rotters," beneath which different pockets of stubborn, independent, or power-hungry people try to survive.

Kate Reading reads Briar Wilkes' point of view chapters and Wil Wheaton Zeke's, and both speak clearly with appropriate pacing and emotion and are pleasurable to listen to in their base narration voices and various character voices. As some listeners have noted, when Briar and Zeke's plot strands begin to intertwine in the second half of the novel and the same characters begin showing up in each other's chapters, we notice the (inevitable) difference between Reading doing certain character voices and Wheaton doing them, but I found their different styles complementary rather than jarring, enjoyed changing from one reader to the other, and even almost believed I was listening to this chapter narrated by the boy's mother and that chapter by her son (even though the narration is third person).

Cherie Priest is good at putting her believable main characters and savory supporting ones into intense situations that reveal more about their environments, personalities, or backgrounds. I wish she had done more with some things, like the shambling mobs of generic zombies, the Chinese air-maintenance faction, and the formidable Boneshaker machine, but, thanks to Reading and Wheaton, I couldn't stop listening to her exciting, character-driven story.

Well written and narrated.

The story paints a vivid picture of a post apocalyptic Seattle, and a devoted mother searching for her runaway son.

Good book. Glad I listened to it.

My brother, who was reading this book before he passed away, wanted to finish it before he passed away. I had read him a chapter from the middle of the book. He had passed the next day. I liked what I had read and wanted to finish the book for him, so I have listened to it for him. Steve, you have now finished your book. 😉

Stupid kid + strong mother + Zombies = FAIL

Would you try another book from Cherie Priest and/or Wil Wheaton and Kate Reading ?

Kate does an excellent job. I lover her reading of

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Story-line (stupid teenager, strong mother) was not compelling. Nothing about Seattle and this time period is particularly interesting; tighter tie-in to the extended Civil War and the

Which scene was your favorite?

Nothing of note.

Did Boneshaker inspire you to do anything?

Stop listening and delete from my iPod. Barely made it through the first part of the book before doing so.

Any additional comments?

Alternate universe stories can be very compelling, especially those related to retelling of actual events.

Amazing world building, lengthy plot

World building was FANTASTIC, but plot dragged a little, especially in the middle. Too much "telling" when it came to emotions for my personal tastes, but the world was immersive enough to keep me going, and held all the grit and struggle I like in steampunk!

Stteampunk and zombies? I swore I never would, bu

Any additional comments?

I swore to myself a long time ago that I would never read any steampunk novels or any zombie novels, yet here is a novel with both. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed this book. Living in Seattle it was prertty cool reading about the history of the city and seeing how the changed it.

Steampunk meets zombies in the Pacific Northwest

I thought I read a hard copy of this book years ago, but apparently I didn't finish it because halfway through the book everything was new. I really enjoyed it, I thought the narrators were great, and the story had me sitting in my car after work waiting for the end of a chapter. The story has a lot of the elements I love all in one piece: Steampunk, alternate history and zombies. I plan on listening to the next installment in the series.

A fun listen

Enjoyed the performance and story overall; couldn’t get completely sucked in by the story like I hoped but worth listening to