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thekarpuk 's review for:
Dreadnought
by Cherie Priest
If there is a missed opportunity in Dreadnought, it's to address the undead Mexicans as "zombres." Other than that, I have very few complaints about the story.
I have trouble reconciling the quality of this book. If Cherie Priest had only written three books, it would seem as though she started learning to write a novel with Boneshaker and finally got the hang of it with Dreadnought. The fact that she apparently as an entire book series before these worries me greatly. I doubt I will ever read them. It's good to know the line with an artist's previous works that you will not cross.
Dreadnought involves all the neat stuff only hinted at in the previous books. Steam-powered mechs, a monstrous diesel train, a three way battle between the Confederacy, the Union, and zombies all while aboard steampunk-fancy engines. For the alternate history nerds, it also goes into a lot of detail about how the much longer Civil War is panning out, a subject the others only mentioned in passing.
The plot also has a more organic structure, the hero has an outlined quest and everything feels like it's working towards that, rather than a series of incidents smacking into a character merely wandering through the story.
To be fair, the dialogue is only passable, but that's a great improvement over the first book and sections of the second. People no longer like part of a bad reenactment, they just relay serviceable dialogue without making too big a deal of it.
Okay, well, barring one conversation involved them yelling over who should trust who, which involve a yelling Texan. Something about men on a powerful vessel always descends into a yelling match about control, power, and trust. Big machines just get macho men hot and bothered.
I have trouble reconciling the quality of this book. If Cherie Priest had only written three books, it would seem as though she started learning to write a novel with Boneshaker and finally got the hang of it with Dreadnought. The fact that she apparently as an entire book series before these worries me greatly. I doubt I will ever read them. It's good to know the line with an artist's previous works that you will not cross.
Dreadnought involves all the neat stuff only hinted at in the previous books. Steam-powered mechs, a monstrous diesel train, a three way battle between the Confederacy, the Union, and zombies all while aboard steampunk-fancy engines. For the alternate history nerds, it also goes into a lot of detail about how the much longer Civil War is panning out, a subject the others only mentioned in passing.
The plot also has a more organic structure, the hero has an outlined quest and everything feels like it's working towards that, rather than a series of incidents smacking into a character merely wandering through the story.
To be fair, the dialogue is only passable, but that's a great improvement over the first book and sections of the second. People no longer like part of a bad reenactment, they just relay serviceable dialogue without making too big a deal of it.
Okay, well, barring one conversation involved them yelling over who should trust who, which involve a yelling Texan. Something about men on a powerful vessel always descends into a yelling match about control, power, and trust. Big machines just get macho men hot and bothered.