Pulp of the Week - The Inexplicables

Cherie Priest
The Inexplicables
The Clockwork Century Book 5

The zombie filled, blight ridden, great-walled Seattle returns in this 5th book in the Clockwork Century series by Cherie Priest. The story focuses on the young Rector Sherman, a victim of the blight, though he grew up in the region of Seattle outside the walls. That giant wall did not protect him enough, as he grew into an addict of that most addictive byproduct of the blight, its distilled and cooked up form called sap.

I found this tale a delightful return to the city that we first saw in Boneshaker, the first and best of the series, and Priest picks up the characters lives farther down their road of life, but she focuses on the young'uns - Rector, Zeke, and the Chinese boy inventor, Huey. That trio of friends propel the book through several new mysteries that shake up the landscape of the walled city. Where are the rotters (the zombies) going? Who are the strange newcomers and what are they doing to the wall? What is the Inexplicable?

The answers to those questions power this highly enjoyable novel that begins taking the walled city into a new era, and provide hope for the future.

The amazing cover painting of The Inexplicables is by Cliff Nielsen and I was thrilled to find that it is an illustration of a scene in the book as opposed to a thematic piece. When Rector and his pals reach this point, I flipped the book to the cover and marveled at the view.

Now for the rating... In terms of this series (which I like quite a bit) I would rank The Inexplicables as third favorite of the series, right in the middle, though only by the smallest fraction above Clementine. I would rank the books in this order [the bracketed number is the series number] from best to least best (I won't say worse, because these books are all good.)

Boneshaker [1]
Ganymede [4]
Inexplicables [5]
Clementine [3]
Dreadnought [2]

With all that said, I give The Inexplicables an 8.75...

Pulp of the Week - Ganymede by Cherie Priest

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Author Cherie Priest returns to the Clockwork Century in her new book, Ganymede.  This marks a glorious fourth book in the series. In Ganymede, Priest turns her eye again to Andan Cly, the airship Captain, and sometime pirate, introduced in the excellent novel Boneshaker. If you have not read Boneshaker, go buy that book, read it, then read Ganymede.

In this adventure, Captain Cly is trying hard to escape his pirate ways. He gets a mysterious offer from an old flame from New Orleans, Josephine Early, who is in need of an airship captain. But Cly is looking to settle down a bit in Seattle, finding himself attracted to the local Sheriff (remember the end of Boneshaker?), but decides to take the offer which when finished will allow him to pick up a load of supplies that Seattle desperately needs. Cly and crew take his airship to New Orleans, but as it turns out, Josephine doesn't need his ship at all. She wants Cly and his crew to pilot a captured ship prototype and deliver it to the Union forces. She is hoping the new ship's capabilities will bring an end to the war.

New Orleans is a city occupied by the Texians on behalf of the Confederacy. Rebels are fighting this occupation, but the battle is tough and Texas is looking to rout the rebels from their hideaway in the swamp. Josephine and her brother are part of the rebels.

I loved the interplay between Andan Cly and Josephine Early. They have the tug of lost love and the reality of the now. Can the flames rekindle, or not. Josephine runs the Garden Court Boarding House which is better known as "Miss Early's Place" and the home of "Miss Early's Girlies." Josephine is a great character; tough, sassy and vulnerable. The scenes with the two of them are outstanding.

The novel is chock-a-block with other great characters, some new, some familiar. There is Ranger Korman from Dreadnought, Josephine's rebel brother Deaderick, a few of the "Girlies", Airship Naahmah Darling crew Huey and Fangand, and mysterious voodoo priestess, Marie Laveau. Rest assured, there are rotters here, their presence has spread to the bayou, though the locals call them zombis (not a typo) not many of them are convinced of their reality. Hardly anyone knows about or believes the zombis exist.

There are air pirates and sea battles, and tons of inventive adventure in between. I loved this book and will not spoil it in this review (as usual). Cherie Priest has delivered the goods here and I look forward to further books in the series.

The cover once again is by Jon Foster. He has done all four books in the series.

I give Ganymede a 9 out of 10.

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Pulp of the Week - Cherie Priest's Boneshaker

Boneshaker
Cherie Priest

One of the most talked about SF novels of last year, Cherie Priest's Boneshaker is a terrific adventure novel and could be the blueprint for a fantastic movie. The characters are great, the setting is unique and cinematic, and the action is fast, dangerous, and inspiringly original.

This is my first time reading a 'Steampunk" novel and I guess that just means alternate history, late 1800s SF. I have read quite a bit of "Cyberpunk" and a little "Splatterpunk" and I guess that people just like labels. Especially ones with the word 'punk' in them.

Based on the appearance of Steampunk fans at the San Diego, Comic Con, wood and brass gadgetry are an important visual piece of the puzzle of Steampunk, and Priest gets all that stuff into the book, but (for example) her goggles are so absolutely vital to the setting that I couldn't imagine the characters not wearing them.

Oh, yeah, and the airships. They're here too, and I love them, and again, they work beautifully.

The story is about a mother and son and the tragic events that lead to them being outcasts in an alternate history zombified Seattle near the turn of the century (from 19th to 20th.) Seattle, it seems, underwent a horrible tragedy that released a continuous font of toxic gas called The Blight upon the land. The Blight caused the zombies. They are a relentless horde that swarms and eats humans. Because the gas is still emanating from the ground a 200 foot tall wall was built around the city, and the city was left for dead.

The mother, Briar Wilkes, knows far more about the Blight than she has told her son. The boy, Zeke, was born just after the gas was released and has never know his father - the man everyone holds responsible for unleashing the Blight gas.

Events take a turn that finds Zeke trapped in the walled city and Briar is off to the rescue. But in a world of zombies and air pirates and people living underground beneath a city of slavering zombies, who will rescue her?

I really like the setting and the characters and the way Cherie Priest works the emotional story of both Briar and her son and everyone else they meet. Hopefully I will learn from this book and make sure that I create a satisfying emotional arc to parallel the story in my own fiction.

I give Boneshaker a 9 out of 10. The evocative Tor paperback cover is by Jon Foster.

I snatched Jon Foster's preliminary sketches from the BSC site.