The Inexplicables

September 24, 2012
Rector “Wreck ’Em” Sherman is an 18-year-old dealer of and addict to sap, a narcotic distilled from the poisonous gas that destroyed the walled-in city of Seattle. Six months after the events of Boneshaker (2009), Rector has no prospects and is haunted by the phantom of a boy he’s sure he sent to die. He finds his way into Seattle, inhabited now by zombies, criminals, and the Doornails, stubborn holdouts who have scraped out a tenuous existence in the ruins, and is quickly enmeshed in strangeness and trouble as people are stalked by a monstrous being, and out-of-town criminals try to take control of the city and the sap trade. Rector’s story is an old-fashioned boys’ adventure, and Priest’s alternate 1880 is as intriguing and enjoyable as ever, but the pacing is slack, and Rector is a more passive protagonist than the vibrant leads of her other three Clockwork Century books. Newcomers would be advised to begin at the beginning. Agent: Jennifer Jackson, the Donald Maass Agency.

October 1, 2012
Another in Priest's Clockwork Century series (Ganymede, 2011, etc.), set in a late-Victorian alternate America where the Civil War never ended, whose chief ingredients are steampunk, supernatural and pulp Western. Orphan Rector Sherman has reached his 18th birthday and so must leave the orphanage. He isn't particularly sad to go, having made a living as a dealer in the drug "sap." Unfortunately, he's addicted to the drug himself and haunted by the ghost of Zeke Wilkes, whom he helped sneak into the walled-off city of Seattle and who almost certainly is dead. To lay the ghost, Rector must enter Seattle himself--a fearsome undertaking, since the city is full of a corrosive yellow gas (the raw material from which sap is derived) and swarming with zombies, or "rotters." Once inside, Rector runs into the Doornails, a mixed-race group who are trying to make the city livable, and learns of another faction led by gangster and drug dealer Yaozu. He's chased by a gigantic apelike creature, rarely glimpsed, that the locals refer to as an "inexplicable." And he makes a couple of friends: puppylike Zeke, who's neither dead nor resentful, and young Chinese know-it-all Houjin, who see to it that he acquires the necessary gas mask and gloves for protection against the gas. Less happily, he's summoned by Yaozu, who knows of Rector and his previous business. Yaozu is concerned that the rotters are disappearing, and if the rotters can get out, others--creatures, people--can get in, and Yaozu has no wish to fight off a succession of gang lords coming up from California. This gritty, intensely realized setting isn't backed up by a similarly robust plot, and readers not partial to mouthy teenagers will find few other characters with any depth. Classification: potboiler. Substance: adequate.

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October 15, 2012
The latest installment of Priest's steampunk series, Clockwork Century, returns to the alternate Civil Warera American landscape she introduced in Boneshaker (2009). Her eccentric protagonist this time is Rector Sherman, who, at 18, has just left the only home he's ever known, an orphanage just outside a toxic, gas-infested, late-1800s Seattle. Hoping to eke out another few years of existence by selling and using sap, the area's gas-derived drug of choice, Rector scales Seattle's imposing walls and seeks out the ruined city's criminal underworld. Aside from making a living, Rector is also hunting the remains of his old friend, Zeke Wilkes, hoping Zeke's troublesome ghost will finally let him be. Yet not only is Zeke very much alive but the reunited pair must contend with a cross section of Seattle's worst elements, including the zombie-like inexplicables and a band of sinister gold prospectors. Priest's narrative has all the compelling ingredients that keep the steampunk subgenre going, including riveting characters; a vividly realized, atmospheric setting; and a well-told story of adventure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)