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Title: Dreadnought
Author: Cherie Priest
Genre: Steampunk (third in series)
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: A Confederate nurse with a newly-dead Union husband receives a mysterious summons from her long-missing father in Seattle. But the ongoing war, shadowy plots, and a horrifying epidemic may make her journey across the country by airship and railroad a bit complicated.
Thoughts: Priest follows up on her novel of a steampunk Seattle infested by zombies with this journey across a war-torn continent. Nurse Mercy is a sympathetic and engaging character, and her hard won skills seem ever in demand as one disaster after another befall her. Her own divided loyalties put her in the crossfire of an extended Civil War over and over again. The pacing is brisk, the tension well-established, and many of the secrets she uncovers make a grim sense when considered in light of the previous novel.
While the plot does not strictly require familiarity with the first book, Boneshaker, a lot of the details will not make much sense without it. Mercy may not know the source of the plague, but we do. The fate of the missing Mexican division takes on far more menace when you already know what has happened to them. And there's a bit at the end that I think was supposed to be a surprise, but because I'd forgotten some key character names (I read the last book a year ago), I didn't figure it out until several pages after I was supposed to understand. Without knowing (and caring about) the previous set of characters, the denouement would be baffling and pointless, despite none of those characters appearing until the last twenty pages.
I very much enjoyed the experience of reading this book--it's quite entertaining--and I wanted to give it a higher rating than I did. But there are a number of gaping plot holes that I just couldn't get around. I still liked it, but it's rather unfortunately flawed.
Spoilers below.
- The biggest question is why Mercy stays on the damn train to begin with. There's a bit of handwaving here and there, but really--she knows that they're a target, she knows she's going to be placed in an untenable position, and eventually she knows that she's driving into an area that's infested with ravenous undead that terrify and nauseate her. Almost everyone else gets off the train and is given alternate tickets to their respective destinations. Why doesn't she? I do realize that she's in a hurry because of her father--but the trains seem to run every few days. With a journey that takes weeks, would a few days really make that much of a difference, compared with the strong possibility of being shot by her own side, or shot as a spy by the people she's traveling with, or eaten? I also realize that she feels a vague responsibility to provide medical help, given that everyone she meets seems to have conveniently misplaced their doctors. But again, this doesn't seem to outweigh the fairly easy-to-see disaster barrelling down the track at her. She doesn't actually owe these people anything--the ranger is untrustworthy, the captain might well have her shot if he figures out what she is, the entire train is dedicated to a mission that hurts the Confederates, but the Confederates are bent on a course of action that will kill her. If she had wrestled with these and bravely chosen, I might be willing to concede the point. But instead, she just kind of goes along for undefined reasons.
- Also, why are there never any doctors around, when they're supposed to be standard? Suspiciously convenient.
- Why does no one know what happened to Seattle? I guess I can understand a random nurse on the front of a Civil War that's lasted 20 years not much caring about a disaster in a city on the other side of the continent. But you would think that if an entire city was turned into a disaster zone filled with ravening zombies nearly two decades ago, this should not be news to, say, the governments of Mexico or Texas. This isn't a minor disaster, this isn't a minor port city, and this isn't a week ago. There should have been plenty of time for the other countries to notice the problem, and it should not be a secret confined to a handful of scientists. You can't hide stuff like this.
- What on earth was Theodora Clay doing on that train? I kept expecting her to turn out to be the spy, or at least a spy. Too much was made of her jerkish behavior and militant stances for her to just be a random passenger.
- If they were so worried about the Shenandoah getting ahead of the Dreadnought and blowing the tracks...why didn't the Dreadnought blow the Shenandoah's tracks? I guess the railroad companies would be upset, but that didn't stop folks from shooting down a civilian dirigible earlier in the book. It's a war. Don't dump the cars, blow the damn tracks.
I won't even call it fridge logic, since it didn't take until I got up to go to the fridge for me to notice the problems. (I spent most of the tense sequence as the Shenandoah pulls up chanting "Blow the tracks, blow the tracks" in my head.) It's a pity--while the overall plot is compelling, key spots work solely because the plot requires them to, not because they make sense. It's still a fast-paced, entertaining read, but regrettably flawed.
Author: Cherie Priest
Genre: Steampunk (third in series)
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: A Confederate nurse with a newly-dead Union husband receives a mysterious summons from her long-missing father in Seattle. But the ongoing war, shadowy plots, and a horrifying epidemic may make her journey across the country by airship and railroad a bit complicated.
Thoughts: Priest follows up on her novel of a steampunk Seattle infested by zombies with this journey across a war-torn continent. Nurse Mercy is a sympathetic and engaging character, and her hard won skills seem ever in demand as one disaster after another befall her. Her own divided loyalties put her in the crossfire of an extended Civil War over and over again. The pacing is brisk, the tension well-established, and many of the secrets she uncovers make a grim sense when considered in light of the previous novel.
While the plot does not strictly require familiarity with the first book, Boneshaker, a lot of the details will not make much sense without it. Mercy may not know the source of the plague, but we do. The fate of the missing Mexican division takes on far more menace when you already know what has happened to them. And there's a bit at the end that I think was supposed to be a surprise, but because I'd forgotten some key character names (I read the last book a year ago), I didn't figure it out until several pages after I was supposed to understand. Without knowing (and caring about) the previous set of characters, the denouement would be baffling and pointless, despite none of those characters appearing until the last twenty pages.
I very much enjoyed the experience of reading this book--it's quite entertaining--and I wanted to give it a higher rating than I did. But there are a number of gaping plot holes that I just couldn't get around. I still liked it, but it's rather unfortunately flawed.
Spoilers below.
- The biggest question is why Mercy stays on the damn train to begin with. There's a bit of handwaving here and there, but really--she knows that they're a target, she knows she's going to be placed in an untenable position, and eventually she knows that she's driving into an area that's infested with ravenous undead that terrify and nauseate her. Almost everyone else gets off the train and is given alternate tickets to their respective destinations. Why doesn't she? I do realize that she's in a hurry because of her father--but the trains seem to run every few days. With a journey that takes weeks, would a few days really make that much of a difference, compared with the strong possibility of being shot by her own side, or shot as a spy by the people she's traveling with, or eaten? I also realize that she feels a vague responsibility to provide medical help, given that everyone she meets seems to have conveniently misplaced their doctors. But again, this doesn't seem to outweigh the fairly easy-to-see disaster barrelling down the track at her. She doesn't actually owe these people anything--the ranger is untrustworthy, the captain might well have her shot if he figures out what she is, the entire train is dedicated to a mission that hurts the Confederates, but the Confederates are bent on a course of action that will kill her. If she had wrestled with these and bravely chosen, I might be willing to concede the point. But instead, she just kind of goes along for undefined reasons.
- Also, why are there never any doctors around, when they're supposed to be standard? Suspiciously convenient.
- Why does no one know what happened to Seattle? I guess I can understand a random nurse on the front of a Civil War that's lasted 20 years not much caring about a disaster in a city on the other side of the continent. But you would think that if an entire city was turned into a disaster zone filled with ravening zombies nearly two decades ago, this should not be news to, say, the governments of Mexico or Texas. This isn't a minor disaster, this isn't a minor port city, and this isn't a week ago. There should have been plenty of time for the other countries to notice the problem, and it should not be a secret confined to a handful of scientists. You can't hide stuff like this.
- What on earth was Theodora Clay doing on that train? I kept expecting her to turn out to be the spy, or at least a spy. Too much was made of her jerkish behavior and militant stances for her to just be a random passenger.
- If they were so worried about the Shenandoah getting ahead of the Dreadnought and blowing the tracks...why didn't the Dreadnought blow the Shenandoah's tracks? I guess the railroad companies would be upset, but that didn't stop folks from shooting down a civilian dirigible earlier in the book. It's a war. Don't dump the cars, blow the damn tracks.
I won't even call it fridge logic, since it didn't take until I got up to go to the fridge for me to notice the problems. (I spent most of the tense sequence as the Shenandoah pulls up chanting "Blow the tracks, blow the tracks" in my head.) It's a pity--while the overall plot is compelling, key spots work solely because the plot requires them to, not because they make sense. It's still a fast-paced, entertaining read, but regrettably flawed.
