The Sword and Laser discussion

It's the last few days of Boneshaker so I thought I'd give one of the sequels a go, particularly since I commented that I thought Boneshaker was hard to get into. Clementine is the next one, but I actually have a copy of Dreadnought (book 3) so that's the one I'm going to try first. I'm told the books are only loosely connected at best.

I'm very happy to say that Dreadnought grabbed me right from the beginning. There are spoilers here, but there's not much more than you get off the back cover of the book. (I can't spoil much yet anyway, I'm only a quarter of the way through).

The main character is a Confederate civil war nurse named Vinita Lynch who receives news of her husband's death in a POW camp quickly followed by this telegram:

To Vinita May Swakhammer stop. Your father Jeremiah Granville Swakhammer has suffered an accident stop. His life hangs by a thread stop. He wants you to come to Tacoma in the Washington territory stop. Please send word if you can make it stop. Sheriff Wilkes can meet you at station and bring you north to Seattle where he lies gravely wounded stop.

She then travels across country via dirigible and other means with adventures along the way.

This book is the anti-Boneshaker in terms of pacing and readability. Vinita is engaging, brave and compassionate despite personal tragedy, both in the case of her husband (a Union soldier) and abandonment by her birth father (Swakhammer). I almost immediately want to see how she fares.

In the first few chapters we get hospital drama, the news about her husband and father, a disastrous dirigible flight, a visit to the battlefront, a steam battlemech (or robot, I'm not sure yet, I think it's on the cover) and hints of the dreaded machine from the title. It's a cracker of a read and I'm going to go finish it ...

Dreadnought is definitely my favourite of the series thus far (though I haven't read Clementine or Fiddlehead yet).

So does Priest ever revisit the Blues? Even in passing? I liked the book, but I've never been the biggest fan of open endings and I really wanted to know what happened to everyone.

There's probably a clue in the telegram above :-) Or maybe Sheriff Wilkes is just a very coincidental name ...

But I think, from the blurb at least, that the Inexplicables is set in Seattle and will relate to them directly.

Well, that was brilliant. I'll definitely read the rest of this series now.

Firstly, the bad news: ugh, zombies.

The good news: Steampunk Civil War Zombie Apocalypse!!

Ok, we're not quite there yet, but the Blight gas, sap and zombies are an underlying story thread all the way through and this alternate US is definitely on its way to just that outcome. (view spoiler)[Particularly considering the whole point of the Dreadnought's journey west is the beginning of a Union plan to weaponize the zombies. There's even a mad scientist type along, who when confronted with a zombie horde stars yelling petulantly about "we could have harnessed that!" (hide spoiler)]

Vinita "Mercy" Lynch is a great character throughout and very sympathetic. She's an incredibly competent nurse, swears like a trooper, solidly middle class and attempts to relate to just about anyone that she meets as well as pulling off being the action hero when needed. When the men around her are being stupid, she's the one who will grab them by the ear and bring them in line. In fact, she's so flawless that she kind of makes me miss Briar from Boneshaker.

In terms of pacing, it starts out running as I indicated above, but a lot of the action takes a break in favour of world development and social infodump between Mercy's arrival in Chattanooga and her boarding the Dreadnought in St Louis. I didn't feel it was a problem, because by that stage I'm hooked anyway. Once she's finally on board the train the story really kicks into gear with interesting characters, intrigue, spies, mystery and action culminating in (view spoiler)[a side-by-side rail battle of war-trains between the Union Dreadnought and the Confederate Shenandoah with extra added zombie goodness (hide spoiler)].

For Holli: (view spoiler)[The whole Boneshaker crew get a cameo at the end, with Briar, Zeke, Cly, Huey, Lucy and Jeremiah all showing up. (hide spoiler)]

Looking forward to the next one (or the previous one; I guess I should go back and read Clementine).

I did like Boneshaker, but I like the sequels better. I've read the first 4 and Dreadnought is my favorite thus far. I pretty much agree with what Lindsay has said about how awesome Mercy is! Briar bored me a little bit, but all the heroines from Clementine, Dreadnought and Ganymede are pretty kick ass

I find the series unique in that it has a subtle arc that connects them. Even though each book stands alone in it's story there are small pieces of a bigger puzzle of the civil war and the blight that connect everyone together. I'm interested to see where she's going in the end.

The characters from Boneshaker definitely pop up some more, even Princess Angeline gets a moment in Ganymede! I haven't read The Inexplicables yet, but it's description mentions Zeke and Seattle, so I would expect to see almost everyone there.

Priest mentioned on her blog that Fiddlehead will wrap up the Clockwork Century and it sounds like she intends for it to wrap up everyone's story. She also has a contract for another novella called Jacaranda that is coming out early 2014.

I was hoping for an audiobook of The Inexplicables, but now that I know Fiddlehead is ending the series I might just have to suck it up and go with the text version. I've adored the audiobooks for this series!