Lincoln Crisler

The easiest definition I can think of for steampunk (or at least the wittiest) is “the science fiction George Washington would have read as a boy, had there been such a thing.” If we follow the science fiction analogy down the road a bit, I think we can safely say that Cherie Priest is well on her way to becoming the Gene Roddenberry of steampunk.

Clementine is the second book set in her Clockwork Century alternate universe. The first, Boneshaker, set the stage in the late 1800s, with an independent Texas and a ongoing Civil War that’s lasted for over two decades. Belle Boyd is a former Confederate spy, cast aside by her Rebel handlers when she became too (in)famous to go undercover. Desperate for employment, she is hired by the Pinkerton Detective Agency out of Chicago to ensure that a former Confederate airship delivers its vital cargo to Louisville, Kentucky, without any interference by the pirates chasing it down. Those pirates are under the leadership of Croggon Hainey, former slave, and the ship he’s chasing is his. When pirate and spy meet, they discover there’s more going on than either of them knew, and when they decide to solve their problems together, they’re easily greater than either of them separately.

Hainey and Belle are both excellent characters that grow visibly closer during the course of the book, starting as enemies and quickly learning to respect each other; I daresay the two would make quite the couple, though I kind of like how Priest stayed away from the sort of tomfoolery many authors (including myself!) would have been tempted to include. Lamar and Simeon, Hainey’s crew, round out the cast of main charactes, and play an excellent foil to the captain’s burgeoning admiration for Belle.

While set in the Clockwork Century that’s grown on fans of Priest since Boneshaker’s release last year, Clementine is also a great introduction to her steampunk universe for those who haven’t read the first book. It’s not a sequel, by any means. While Clementine does reference events from Boneshaker, Priest couches those nods in such a manner so as to raise curiosity, not confusion, among the uninitiated. One can easily pluck Clementine from a bookstore shelf, enjoy it thoroughly and then move on to Boneshaker. Those who have read Boneshaker will find that Clementine only dulls the appetite slightly; the story is perfectly suited for its 200 pages, but it’s hard not to want more of Priest’s steampunk. Luckily, more is on the way; Dreadnought, the second TOR novel set in the Clockwork Century, is due in September.

I’ll lead this review off with the comment I left on Ms. Priest’s blog post on the TOR website immediately after receiving Boneshaker in the mail:

Got my copy in the mail today!! SQUEEEE! And I’m totally blowing off everything in my TBR pile after finishing the one review I’ve obligated myself to. SQUEEEEE!!

Oh, and before I forget…

SQUEE.  

The easiest way to describe Boneshaker is to say that I read it in less than three days. I usually save my reading for work or the bus ride there and back, but I read this one during my downtime as well. I didn’t remember to download the new episodes of Dexter and Heroes until Wednesday. And the squee never stopped.

Boneshaker is set in an alternate version of Seattle around 1880. The Civil War is still dragging out back East, and the western frontier is more heavily populated than during our history due to the Klondike gold rush happening sooner. A twisted scientist is hired to create a machine to break through the Alaskan ice for gold, and things go awry, devastating Seattle and releasing a poisonous, zombie-creating gas from beneath the Earth’s surface.

Enter Briar Wilkes, the widow of the aforementioned mad doctor, and their teenage son, Ezekiel. Sixteen years after the disaster that ended in two square miles of zombie-infested Seattle being walled off, Zeke figures he can prove his father’s innocence by crawling under the wall and into the city his parents used to call home. Briar chases after, resulting in a nonstop adventure garnished with lavish imagery, clever inventions, steampunk technology, airships, pirates and the living dead.

I fell in absolute LUST with Boneshaker a month before it’s release, at http://theclockworkcentury.com/. You can read a short story set in Priest’s steampunk universe, an excerpt from Boneshaker, and catch news and updates on related projects, to include the upcoming novella, Clementine, and the sequel to Boneshaker, Dreadnought.

5,000,123,890/10. There’s still a couple months to go, but this might be the best book I’ve read in 2009.