I’ve been reading a lot lately, and some of the things are rather steampunk. Some of these books are the beginning of a series.
Cover of Boneshaker (Sci Fi Essential Books)
Boneshaker
Author: Cherie Priest
Summary: In the early days of the Civil War, there are rumors of gold in the Klondike. The Russians hire Leviticus Blue to build the Boneshaker, a machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. But the Boneshaker failed on the first run. It destroyed much of Downtown Seattle and raised the blight gas that caused anything that breathed it in to become the living dead. It’s sixteen years later, and Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes, lives right outside of the Blight-filled, walled in city of Seattle. Her life is hard with a bad reputation and a sixteen-year-old son, Zeke, but they manage. Until Zeke decides to go into the city of Seattle. Their he meats air pirates, criminals, and the undead. And the only person who can save him is Briar.
Sequels: This book is part of the Clockwork Century series. The next books in the series, in order, are Clementine, Dreadnought, Ganymede, and The Inexplicables.
Notes: I’m in the middle of reading thin book, so i’m not sure how good this book is. I’m only on page 80.
Leviathan
Cover of Leviathan
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Summary: It’s 1914, World War I, and the Clankers, a group with builing machines with metal, are against the Darwinists, people who follow Charles Darwin in fabricating animals. Deryn is a girl pretending to be a boy, Dylan, so she is able to become an airshipman. Due to a problem with a flight test, she finds herself upon the Leviathan, a fabricated war beast built to fly. Aleksander, an Austro-Hungarian prince, is on the run with a faithful crew on a Clanker-made walker machine. He meets Deryn during the crash of the Leviathan. Alek and his crew have to fix the Leviathan, or the War might be over, with the Clankers winning.
Sequels: Behemoth (2nd book), Goliath (3rd book)
Notes: This series is aimed more for children
The Time Machine
Author: H. G. Wells
Summary:
The book’s protagonist is an English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surrey, identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveller. The narrator recounts the Traveller’s lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a fourth Dimension, and his demonstration of a tabletop model machine for travelling through it. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person, and returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator. In the new narrative, the Time Traveller tests his device with a journey that takes him to 802,701 A.D., where he meets the Eloi, a society of small, elegant, childlike adults. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings, doing no work and having a fruity diet. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline, and he speculates that they are a peaceful communist society, the result of humanity conquering nature with technology, and subsequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival.*
Sequels: H. G. Wells didn’t write any sequels to this story, but he does have a bunch of other short stories.
Notes: I started reading this but then put it down. I sort of got bored, but I am going to finish reading this over the summer. I know it’s a good story.
*I got this summary from Wikipedia. It isn’t my summary.
