Book Review: Boneshaker

GOGGLES AND AIRSHIPS! WIN! Ooo, and a quote from Scott Westerfeld. Shiny!

 From Barnes and Noble:

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 sixteen 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.

All I can say is that it was a good thing I waited until my Thanksgiving break to read this book because once I picked it up, it was impossible for me to put down.

The Good:

Where do I start? I'm not used to reviewing books I love this much. Compliments are anathema to my being.

This book is like an action-adventure movie on paper. By which I mean, we get all the thrills, danger, and edge of your seat tension that we love about movies, plus the detailed exposition and character insights that we can only get via books. Plus, mad science.

Let me make it clear that I am not a fan of the zombie-zeitgeist that's taken media by storm over the past years. They're a metaphor which has been played out and overused by people seeking to criticize our capitalistic and apathetic society. However, in Boneshaker, there's no metaphor beating us over the head to be heard. (Okay, well, yes, you can probably find meaning in the sap-drug that's made from the same gas that causes people to become zombies, but Priest doesn't let social commentary get in the way of the story. It's like an optional side dish; you can examine the book for hidden meaning and symbols, or you can choose to enjoy people living in a walled-off city. Your choice. Much like whether or not to eat the carton of rice with your Chinese take-out. Where was I again?) These zombies are only monsters that were created by a disaster that's half man-made/half natural and they want to eat you. All of you. Every last tasty limb. Watching your weight by eating only brains is such a waste of time when you're already dead. I digress.

My point is that Priest has made zombies fun again. I kind of want to hug her for it.

The cast of characters is typical of adventure novels, but still fun. I never had to stop and reread a previous chapter to remind myself who someone was. We never get too deep into who they are, so they remain in this in between space - more filled out than cardboard, but not quite individuals. The main narrators, Briar and Zeke, provide contrasting narratives: Briar's maturity, her world-weariness, and her mama-bear-like focus and determination to rescue her son versus Zeke's youthful exuberance, then faltering confidence in his meticulously planned escapade as it all goes to hell.  There isn't exactly anything new about them except the situation they're in. But still, fun.

The plot is also fairly familiar. Parent has to rescue child from stupid adventure, gets sucked into larger drama that invariably prompts protagonists to save the day, after which parent and child become closer and understand one another better. But this plot takes place a walled off city filled with blighted gas, shambling horrors, and a mad man living in a train station. Like I said. Really fun.


Also, mad science.

The Bad:

Briar has a secret. It's supposed to be a doozy. Unfortunately, I figured it out about halfway through the book. Maybe sooner.

Furthermore, while I enjoyed the premise of the Civil War having lasted for decades longer than it really did, I wish the author had done more with it. I understand that the author probably had her hands full with main plot of the novel, but a bit more focus on the politics, on what else is happening in the world, the factors that have kept the war going on like this, etc, would have been really, really nice filler for world-building.

For that matter, the alternative history of it in general, while enjoyable to me, is a factor that other readers may not enjoy. Suspension of disbelief allows us the understand and accept that things are different in this world, but we're expected to just accept this without ever getting a full or satisfying explanation. I was able to overlook that and enjoy the book despite this (I've been programmed to accept these things by a lifetime of reading Stephen King), but I can understand how other readers may not be get past that.

The Rest:

The writing is not the greatest in the world. My rhapsodizing about Laini Taylor a post or so back? Not gonna happen here. However, that doesn't mean that the writing is bad. As my mother said when I gave her the book, Priest's writing is innocuous; it gets out of the way of the story. And what a story it is.

While this book isn't marketed as YA, I could easily young adult readers enjoying this book, despite the lack of romance and the middle-aged heroine. Teenage girls should be reassured that they can still rock in their old(er) age, in my opinion.

Boneshaker also marks the beginning of the Clockwork Century series. While I normally gripe about book series - so long, more books to buy, what will I do with my dashed hopes if the series starts to suck - Boneshaker and its sequels have so far been immune to those issues. Despite being over 400 pages long, I read this book in less than a day, and since they're all first released in paperback I've been able to easily afford the sequels on my college student budget.

Final Thoughts:

Before it is anything else, I think that this book is fun. It's quick, it's exciting, it has equally quick, fun, and exciting sequels. It takes a bunch of pop-culture curiosities, like zombies and steampunk, and throws them in a pot, and gives us some tasty book-chili. Not everyone likes chili. Not everyone likes the same type of chili. Few people want to eat chili every day. If you like zombies, walled-off secret cities, mad science, and fierce heroines, don't mind liberties being taken with history, and just want to read something slightly mindless without being stupid or crude, give Boneshaker a ride. And even if you don't like the book, go follow Cherie Priest on twitter anyway. She posts pictures of cats.

My Rating: 4/5 Mushrooms

Guest Blog: What I see with my ears I hear with my eyes.

Long time friend and partner in crime, Aurora*, has provided me with an opinion piece regarding an art gallery we went to this past Friday.

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We spent the evening at Towson University's senior student art exhibition at the Load of Fun gallery in downtown Baltimore.  Like most contemporary art exhibits, the gallery is a playground of speculative reality.  Unlike those Rorschach images where you interpret what you see, these images are what their creator tells you they are, often defying all laws of congruency. Tonight's were definitely exercises in the extemporaneous: welded metal bracelets linked to replicate handcuffs welded to an eyeglass case filled with origami birds made out of pages pulled from a porno mag is wittily dubbed "Sexual Frustration". Photographs of plant life bursting through plots of urban decay is "Wasted Space" - funny, my daughter is curating a gallery showing of similar works in a couple months which go by the theme of "The Third Conflict". Like I said, we must believe the artist's perspective, no matter how quantum the leap from their vision to ours.

Art is language, language similar to the speaking in tongues heard in old revival tents (or some Pentecostal churches). Not unlike Pentecost, each man hears it in his own language, regardless of what is being said. I must say some of what I looked at tonight was babble - things more geared toward the intellect than the heart.

I can't help but compare this language with the older mumblings of Mr. Van Gough or Gogh as you will or if you follow BBC's Dr. Who, Van Goth...(and a postmortem identity crisis ensues),  Like Mozart's four to eight measure classical constructions geared to the primate mind, Van Gough's language is simple and direct.  His vowels are color, his consonants clean dark lines, his elisions clouded skies and starry nights.  He will get in your face and speak of hope past despair with impeccable  diction. No need fear anything being lost in translation. He speaks to the heart, and his words leave you breathless.

I have a hard time reconciling the honesty of image found in photos by Pollock, or paintings by any great master from time immemorial with a gallery of works by students who have been taught to be fundamentally dishonest in the name of creating a commercial product, created without the discipline whose transcendence is the language of true art.

Or maybe this is the frustration of an old lady whose first love was the crayon box.  I did ok, the problem was the music was always voted more impressive than the drawings, which may have led down the inevitable path towards engineering, as it did for so many others on one side of my family.  I remember a high school guidance counselor looking over the results of one of the many tests we were subjected to and muttering something along the lines of "it seems you have an aptitude for engineering.  Too bad you're a girl. Have you considered a vocation with the Dominicans?" and so I turned to a life of crime instead.

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*I have poked and prodded Aurora to start a blog of her own, but she prefers to remain the silent but deadly member of my crime syndicate. Show her some love so that she'll blog for me again. 

Book Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

See this cover? This is a nice cover. I like this cover.

From Goodreads:

Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages—not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers—beautiful, haunted Akiva—fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

In this particular case, it's more than appropriate that I start the review with a Goodreads description, as it was on Goodreads that almost all my friends recommended this book to me. Given the sterling recs I'd been given, when the birthday B&N gift-cards came around, it was a no-brainer to pick this one up. I'm thrilled to say I wasn't disappointed.

The Good:

The writing, as promised, was beautiful. Taylor has a way with words that makes you want to wallow in them, without succumbing to overly ornate purple prose. Writing like this makes me think of foods - maybe my mom's fruit parfaits - which are delicious and I can enjoy them everyday, guilt-free. Okay, yes, Laini Taylor writes like my mom's fruit parfaits. Let's go with that.

The world is enthralling. The more I read, the more I wanted to know. Even had I hated the story, I would probably read the rest of the series just so I could know more about how everything worked. Luckily, the story is pretty cool. The mechanics for the price of magic are maybe not the most original, but they're presented in a way that is fresh and emotionally wrenching. And Taylor's theology - the chimera versus the seraphs -is a delightful twist on familiar religious lore. It makes my theology and cosmology loving heart happy.

Sweet Ceiling Cat, the characters. I love the secondary characters. I want more of all of them. These characters are vibrant and real - at least, as real as secondary fictional characters can be. But you don't have to guess about Brimstone's disapproval or Zuzana's delightfully charming threats of violence and mischief as they are integral to the characters personalities, ascending the realm of 'quirks' to being a part of who that characters is. As for our protagonists....

Karou is perhaps my favorite YA protagonist since Katniss. She's strong and smart, but heavily flawed and we know it. She's self-centered and cruel at times, ungrateful and indecisive. These aren't "I'm so clumsy" traits to make her relatable. These are real, difficult obstacles for her to overcome in herself. But for as awful as they could be, these traits make me like her more. When she's kicking ass, she's not some untouchable Wonder Girl. When she's torn between wanting to hang out with Zuzana while Brimstone is sending her on another extraordinary errand, you can appreciate that she really is just a teenager caught between worlds with absolutely no middle ground. Her complaining and self-centeredness is made sort of forgivable by merit that, while it isn't necessarily harder than any other teenagers life, it is so other that there is no one she can talk to about it. There is no one else like her, no one to understand. At the end of the day she is always alone. Until Akiva.

 I don't know how to feel about Akiva. He feels a little like every romantic interest. I'll leave him up to the interpretation of others and withhold my own judgment until another book.

The Bad:

The writing in the second part fell apart at points. Maybe it's just me, since I haven't seen this complaint elsewhere, but after all the gorgeous, luxurious writing of the first half, certain chapters and scenes in the story of Madrigal seemed almost clinical and detached. It was, in a word, disappointing.

The Rest:

I won't put the romance under The Bad, because honestly, it's one of the best and most believable 'love at first sight' stories I've ever read. But I really wish it hadn't consumed so much of this first book. It felt like the plot had suddenly been jerked hard toward the second star on the right and straight on til morning. It was super dark and then abruptly sunshine and puppies and twu luv! It felt like the romance became its own, almost separate story, tangential to the original plot.

Okay, it wasn't that bad, but it certainly felt that way at times. Probably because I'm the enemy of all romance.

Final Thoughts:

If there isn't more of Brimstone in the next book, I'm going to riot.

The sequel, Days of Blood and Starlight, is due out November, 2012.

Rating 4.5/5 Mushrooms

TV - Bedlam

I am a total sucker for ghost shows. I will watch any of them at least once. Maybe twice if nothing better is on. And I love British stuff. So a fictionalized account of actual deaths and ghosts in an historic British landmark is sort of exactly what I want out of life. Unfortunately, TV is created for the largest common denominator of any group, so my ghost shows get filled with quasi attractive, almost talented twenty-somethings, all of whom are at least half as interested in screwing as they are in dealing with the undead. Meanwhile, I go to sleep crying into my copy of The House on Haunted Hill and let the Erlkonig lull me to sleep.

The Premise

Bedlam Asylum has been closed for years after a scandal revealed the abuse of patients. The Asylum has been locked away for years, just sitting and taking up space, until the descendants of the last owner take over the property, creating a brighter future for the historic building by turning it into apartments.

(Raise your hand if you've heard a story like this before.)

The family patriarch is overseeing the remodeling, while his daughter and her friends live in one of the finished flats. In the premiere episode, we see him gifting his daughter with a ring which the crew pulled from the wall of the asylum.

(Raise your hand if you can taste the impending fail.)

In what will likely become a weekly formula, chaos ensues as skeptical people make elementary mistakes in the wake of an ghosts.

(Raise your hand if you want a Scooby Snack.)

And yet, I'm still watching.

The Characters

I am henceforth dubbing the cast as a whole Pretty-Prissy-People-With-Posh-Accents-And-Poltergeist-Problems until further notice. All individual characters will be given fake names until such a time as they warrant my giving a crap about them.

The main character, Sir Broods-A-Lot, broods frequently and is possibly even worse at deflecting questions about his ability to see ghosts than Melinda Gordon. Granted, he didn't have an awesomesauce grandmother to guide him through his powers (we don't think). Instead, he had an adopted family that thought he was crazy and an embarrassment, and eventually shipped him off to a nut house where he was pumped full of crazy-be-gone pills to try stop him from seeing all that ghost crap that made the family look bad. Unfortunately for them, the hospital gave him a clean bill of health, and decided he really didn't need any medicine since he wasn't crazy, and sent him on his merry, socially awkward but hot way. He still sees ghosts though, so the boy still has no credibility. The actor didn't have a lot to work with in the premiere; I can't quite tell if he actually acted the part of shy, reclusive, but goodhearted and earnest psychic, or if that's just what I read into the character. Anyway, he's kind of hot, so even if this show tanks, we'll probably see him again in some other BBC show - because God knows there are only ten actors in the whole of Britain.

Princess Snobby Slut is the cousin of Sir Broods-A-Lot, and she is snobbish and a bit of a slut. Don't believe me? Within the first ten minutes of the show, she seduces her male flatmate, knowing her other flatmate has a thing for him, mainly to prove that she can and to screw with the heads of all who know her. When Sir Broods-A-Lot bursts in during their foreplay to save her dumb butt from impending ghost-smiting, she is quite put out, and proceeds to make everything awkward for everybody. Forever. She does this again the following morning by completely dismissing the flatmate she'd been dry-humping only hours earlier. We learn through her other flatmate that this is rather typical behaviour from Princess Snobby Slut, and I am left wondering why I should care about her survival at all. Because I really, really don't. I can only hope that the writers have one hell of a character development arc planned out for her, otherwise I'm voting that she gets offed in the season finale. Of course in a series like this, there's a good chance they'd bring her character back as a ghostly adviser with a chronic case of stupid-bitchitis. Every genre has its' abused deus machinas.

Mr. Milktoast is the flatmate PSS seduced at the beginning of the show. Despite the kind of sleazy and assholish overtones his character was introduced with, I actual got to like him as the episode progressed. Suffering some kind of survivors guilt two years after the death of his brother, I can attribute his otherwise uncharacteristic interest in PSS as some part of his emotional trauma. Whether because he's still grieving or because he is supposed to be a nice guy, MM is the first character to really try get SBAL(look, typing out all these names gets hard after a few paragraphs) to talk about his ability and believe that he's not crazy. He and SBAL are going to be bros someday soon, I just know it.

Clueless Kitten is like Brittany Murphy's character in Clueless (you see what I did thar?). She's sweet, naive, totally out of her element, and everybody dumps on her because her spine is made of a single strand of candy floss. I'm really hoping she's just going to snap one day and stab PSS in the twat. Though given her proclivities as we see in later episodes, PSS might just be into that.

Finally, we have the dark, evasive, more than slightly menacing building owner who has taught his daughter, PSS, all she knows about being a snobbish slut. I really want to see more of him and his menacing hint dropping, but I fear that if BBC headed my wishes and made him a bigger character at this point in the show, he would lose his evil, pinch-faced, condescending charm.

Plot Devices and Other Points of Interest

Apparently, Sir Broods-A-Lot is notified of impending danger by supernatural text messages. I want to mock this, but one of my favorite shows involves an alien traveling through time and space in a police phone booth, so I really can't say anything. Judgement shall be withheld until further notice.

And where the heck does SBAL get his broody, psychic powers? That stuff doesn't just come out of nowhere - at least, it doesn't in GOOD fiction. While ep. 3 gave us part of the answer, there has to be more and revealing it all in season one would be disappointing. LEAVE US WANTING MORE, BBC! And was there an ulterior motive in SBAL's adoption? Given who it was orchestrated by, I would not be surprised at all.

Who the heck keeps warning SBAL about PSS? Why do they want her to live? I certainly don't.

On a related note, there are a group of messages SBAL keeps receiving that are frighteningly contradictory, as though there are two forces, one trying to get him to stay to help a female character, and the other telling him it's no use and to go away. This intrigues me and it should intrigue you too. It is one of the more potent foreshadowing tools and it keeps me coming back.

The last owner of the facility, when it was still an asylum, was removed from his position and was in the process of being brought to trial for rampant abuse of patients. However, he died before he could be tried. I smell a finale enemy.

To explain the growing paths of UST would require a wall and a few balls of multicolored yarn to map and explain. If we could just get some solidity on just ONE of these, I would be the happiest girl. But being confronted with all of them on top of the plot makes it very hard to explain to my brother when he asks me what's going on.

Final Thoughts

They have already tried my patience by killing a cat. But there are enough things going on that make me curious and keep me entertained that I'm going to continue watching until they either jump the ghost shark or kill another kitty.