Where to Start with Cherie Priest
Cherie Priest writes genre fiction with the throttle wide open. She is best known for the Clockwork Century series, which reimagines the American Civil War in a world of steampunk technology, airships, and a mysterious blight gas that turns its victims into the walking dead. Priest has a gift for combining genres that should not work together and making them feel inevitable. Her steampunk is not polished brass and genteel manners but gritty, dangerous, and rooted in the lives of working people, especially women, fighting to protect what matters to them. She has also written horror, urban fantasy, and Southern Gothic fiction, always with the same propulsive energy and sharp characterization.
Start here
Boneshaker
Cherie Priest · 416 pages · 2009 · Easy
Themes: survival, motherhood, alternate history, airships, the undead
In an alternate 1880s Seattle, a massive drilling machine tore through the streets and cracked open a vein of poisonous gas that turned its victims into shambling undead. A wall was built to contain the devastation. Sixteen years later, Briar Wilkes, the widow of the machine’s inventor, must venture inside the walled city to rescue her teenage son, navigating a ruined landscape of air pirates, criminal overlords, and the ravenous dead.
Why Start Here
Boneshaker is Priest at her best: propulsive, inventive, and anchored by a protagonist you cannot help but root for. Briar Wilkes is not a chosen one or a warrior. She is a working mother with a ruined reputation who walks into a city full of zombies because her son went in first. That combination of grit and heart defines everything Priest writes.
The novel won the Locus Award and earned Hugo and Nebula nominations, establishing Priest as a major voice in steampunk fiction. The alternate Pacific Northwest setting, with its Civil War backdrop and frontier energy, feels entirely original. Priest fills the walled city with vivid details that make the world feel lived-in rather than designed.
What to Expect
A fast-paced adventure with horror elements that never lets up. The pacing is brisk, the action sequences are tense, and the relationship between Briar and her son Zeke gives the story genuine emotional weight. At 416 pages, it reads quickly. If you enjoy it, the Clockwork Century series continues with Dreadnought, Ganymede, and others, each set in a different corner of Priest’s alternate America.