The rest of the world walled Seattle off and did their best to forget about it, except for two things: they still hate Briar, as a stand-in for Blue and the yellow gas can be distilled into a drug ( of course the new drug comes through Seattle. Blue disappeared, and the gas turned everyone it touched into “rotters,” otherwise known as coffee-deprived Seattleans zombies. Perhaps it was connected to the machine, perhaps it wasn’t.

Except before the debut, things go a little haywire and a bank or two is robbed instead, and a mysterious low-lying gas released into the local atmosphere. She was married to an inventor, Leviticus Blue, who built a machine that was supposed to impress the Russians with it’s gold-mining skill. Story alternates between the viewpoint of Ezekiel, a young teen, and that of his mother, Briar Wilkes, a hard-working widow. Finally opened it again today and finished the last 250 or so pages, proving at least one of two things: 1) that I am a ridiculous procrastinator that would do anything other than class homework, and 2) Priest can pull it together it just takes awhile. Once home, I picked it back up and had a little better luck, but soon got distracted with shinier books life. Plus, NYC is all busy and distracting and such. I started this on vacation in NYC, and we just weren’t getting along.

I don’t really do the mother-hen story line, and I often get the urge to slap headstrong teenage boys. It started off slow, but I fully realize that was a miscalibration with the story compatibility recognizer. Read June 25 to JRecommended for procrastinators and steampunk fans ★ ★ ★

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest