Boneshaker

At first glance, what's not to like? A tough, embittered heroine, a headstrong kid; a steampunk universe; an evil inventor; an alternative Seattle....

And then things start going wrong.

A gas, linked to volcanism, that turns people into zombies? A tunnel into and under a sealed city, that doesn't leak that selfsame gas out? Chimneys above that gas that act as snorkels, that you can fall down - that hold themselves up despite their flimsy construction?

I'm sorry: all the above, plus the almost unrelievedly depressing weather, scenery and plotline, mean that this book just didn't cut it for me. I want my steampunk to well realised, to have machinery that is explained, to be well founded in physics and chemistry, before I can engage with it - and this has none of that.

Oh, I quite like the premise that the Confederacy is still hanging in there twenty years on; Priest's Seattle seems pretty well imagined; her characters are reasonably solid - if unrealistically large, in two cases - but just her noxious gas is enough to sour the story (and her atmosphere, one assumes) just a little too much for me.

It's a pity: I was looking forward to it.