But lo and behold, this turned into an exercise in horrible creative decisions. Put it in a proper steampunk setting and it could’ve been my favorite novel. That’s a recipe for a perfect 60s UK kitchen sink drama. The son wants to clear the reputation of both, while the mother (knowing the truth) tries to protect him from what he doesn’t know. The plot revolves around a mother and a son, who are dealing with the heritage of the two patriarchs of their family – a fair rulebreaker of a grandad, and the mad scientist husband and father. Why? After finishing the book I still have no idea. Pages after pages are filled with words that don’t mean anything, words that don’t convey any information. How many pages are wasted on – “go there”, “where are we?”, “I’m the daughter of Maynard”? All of them. Instead, we get extensive worldbuilding of the utterly uninteresting world that barely resembles any connection to steampunk or gaslight fantasy with some of the dullest dialogue in genre literature. Character development or even a surface level study? No time for that. Turns out plot doesn’t matter in an action-adventure novel. The fact that it was pushed by Vandermeer and Wheaton combined with positive reviews from mainstream media should’ve been a red flag.Ī perfect premise – (A scientist, Russian Alaska, zombies, locked-down city) has been brutally butchered by the absolute lack of writing skill or storytelling craft.

Every single time I fall for expensive marketing efforts (like Ruin of Kings). I know that rambling about an 11-year-old book is useless, but it begs for proper critique.

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest