Steampunk: Where Sci-Fi meets Historical Fiction

Greetings and salutations.

Let me begin by saying that this will not be the sole post here to represent the blooming genre of steampunk literature, but there will be many more to come I'm sure. You may recall my first post about the Dapper Men and to be certain there will come a time when several of us post about the most glorious and fashionable authoress Gail Carriger but for now please bear with me.

Since my own personal discovery of this genre two Octobers ago I have become something of an addict. I have a rather long list of books of this ilk which I very much desire to read, but unfortunately do not have the funding or the time as of yet to complete all of them. I am picking my way as I go, and every month or so I pick up a new steampunk treat to satiate my hunger.

This month I picked up the book "Dreadnought" by Cherie Priest.

In a nutshell: the Civil War is still raging many years after our history tells us it was supposed to have ended. Texas is a Republic, Mexico is an Empire, and the North and the South are still fighting tooth and nail. Airships, boats and trains are primary modes of transportation, the slaves have been freed but not given full rights yet, and the world is something of a mess.

Our heroine, Vinita "Mercy" Lynch, works at the Robertson Hospital in Virginia. She is a Confederate nurse, but a nurse nonetheless, and a damn good one. She receives word that her husband has been killed some months ago, and on the same day receives a telegram that speaks of her ailing father who begs her to come to him in Tacoma, WA. To travel entirely across the country is difficult, let alone in the middle of a war, but Mercy has nothing left to do but go, despite the fact that she hasn't seen her real father since she was six. He went West in search of gold and never came back, presumed dead, till now.

Mercy must travel by boat, airship, and finally train -- a Union train, armed and armored to the teeth. It's an enormous, impossibly fast, impossibly strong monstrosity of a machine called the Dreadnought and it is carrying something secret and quite deadly. The train ride west is full of attacks, espionage, and good old fashioned Western gunslinging. Oh, and there are big Iron Giant type machines fighting for the Union and the Confederacy, and there may or may not be a drug called sap that, when one overdoses on it, causes one to lose one's mind, senses, and become a walking corpse that's insatiably hungry for the living flesh of others. Oh, yes.

Did I mention how fucking FUN alternate history is?

Cherie Priest's storytelling skills are straight up excellent. The story is almost written in real time, so I felt the need to grip my book with white knuckles and stay in one place until I had completed the story, racing against time to get to the ending that I was dying to find out about. When I got to the end, however, I realized that "Dreadnought" takes place in the same world/time as Priest's first book, "Boneshaker" (which I also had on my list) and subsequently wished that I had also grabbed "Boneshaker" -- damn it that I picked up "Dreadnought" first! I have a thing about reading/watching things in the proper written/produced order. But no matter. It wasn't extremely vital to the plot, as I said, but rest assured I will be reading "Boneshaker" as well.

Can we talk about the fucking brilliant titles? Like.... shit.

Cherie Priest gets an A+ in Alternate History 101. I think she is going to graduate with honors.


Lady Aly