Dear readers, I have an author interview tomorrow for an amazing rising author: Cherie Priest.  In preparation for the interview, I picked up her latest book – Boneshaker (pictured left, link takes you to the BookSwim title page for that book).  Despite my average reading speed, I managed to get through nearly 250 pages of the book in 2 days and am looking forward to the next 150 pages.

There are a ton of great reviews about this book, and most of the teasers really describe it well – so I won’t reiterate too much on that realm.  A quote on the cover handles it well, “A steampunk-zombie-airship adventure of rollicking pace and sweeping proportions, full of wonderfully gnarly details.  This book is made of irresistible.”

At first, I was expecting (and hoping, as I’m somewhat of a steam-punk guy) a sci-fi steam punk adventure of epic proportions.  What surprised me was that it was so much more.  In fact, there is a huge element of mystery in this book that I’ve seen left out of many book reviews and teasers.  Bare in mind, I haven’t completed the book in full yet, but I am going to very shortly.  Below I am going to list the reasons why I think this is a great read.  If they seem to fit your fancy, make sure you add this to your pool.

1. The book has quite a few steampunk elements to it, although not enough to make an inventor drool.  If you didn’t go to engineering school but think machines are cool – this is right up your alley.  As well – if you DID go to engineering school, you won’t see anything mind-blowing but still worth it.
2. While I love the concept of a good zombie adventure (Book, Movie, or Video Game), I am not a fan of zombies being the main driving force.  Boneshaker splashes in zombies as one piece of an intricate maze – as an accent if you will (as much as Zombies can accent anything).  Great for those who love zombies as well as those who don’t.
3. The characters are very well thought out.  Every character is given detail and history that brings them to life.  This is a must for any good book in my mind, and this one executes.
4. It moves and it moves quickly.  There is never a dull moment and rarely is there a mention of time – which is something that I found gripping.  I’d be reading for three hours straight and a character would mention that night had began to fall.  Another character would remark how surprising it was that time passed about the same moment as I would.  Not to knock one of my favorite authors of all time (JRR Tolkien) but there is only so many pages of description about Bilbo Baggins’ cuff-links that I can read before I require a nap.  Boneshaker has not bored me yet.
5. It is a great jump into a new genre for those who haven’t dove into science fiction/steampunk.  I find that the science fiction books that I recommend to non science fiction readers tend to be received poorly.  Boneshaker does a great job of not being too sci-fi as to allow the average mystery or novel reader to jump into the genre and get a taste of it before diving head-first into hardcore science fiction.

I promise to update this review after I have completed the book, but I put this out there now as I am interviewing the author Cherie Priest tomorrow and I wanted to generate some buzz as well as see if there were any questions that our audience wish to ask?

Until Tomorrow

-Nick