I loved Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, so I jumped at the chance for an ARC for her new book Clementine, also set in the Clockwork Century milieu. Ms. Priest offered Clementine in the Con or Bust charity auction, and I was the high bidder at $75. I normally wouldn’t pay that much for a book, as I’m not a collector, but it’s all about the donation, rather than the goods. For those who don’t know, Con or Bust raises money to send fans of color to science fiction conventions, primarily WisCon. Which fits right in with my attempts the last few years to read more diversely. It also thrills me that Ms. Priest supported the effort.
Clementine is a novella length steampunk story. Boneshaker introduced Croggon Hainey, pirate captain of the dirigible Free Crow. He doesn’t get a ton of ink there, but it does lead directly into Clementine where Hainey and a couple of crew members chase pirate Felton Brink, who’s pirated the Free Crow away from the pirates. And they aren’t too happy about it. As the story begins, they are finally about to catch up in Kansas after a cross-country chase from Seattle.
Maria Isabella Boyd is a former Confederate spy and actress, no longer trusted by the South and working for the Pinkerton detective agency out of Chicago. Her first assignment is to prevent Hainey from delaying the Free Crow, rechristened as the Clementine, from delivering it’s cargo to a Union Army weapons lab. She’s not particularly happy working for the Union, even indirectly, but a woman’s gotta eat. Not to mention she’s good at the cloak and dagger stuff.
I’ll call it Raiders of the Lost Ark meets steampunk, and I enjoyed it. Croggon Hainey and his crew are great. The action is awesome! 99% of it is dirigible on dirigible action. Armored dirigibles that is. Mini Gatling guns and hydrogen and ramming and death spirals! Also a big explosion or two. Short, digestible, and fun!
I gotta warn a bit. This is not the re-envisioned version of the Star Wars series, where Greedo shoots first and Han Solo becomes a pure hero. The good guys are bad guys. I happen to like that sort of thing. Stories where the heroes are white and the bad guys wear black aren’t as interesting. I want Croggon to win because he’s interesting. (Though if they are pure evil, they better be really interesting!)
The book does rely a lot on clichéd cloak and dagger antics and hand-waving to move the plot between scenes. Also, the dialogue often falls into one of my pet peeve categories, the overly logical laying out of cards on the table that leads everyone in the conversation to a mutually acceptable detente. I rolled my eyes and got on with the story, which as I wrote above is a hell of a lot of fun.
Despite knowing about Subterranean Press for years and having decided long ago I should be reading a title or two, I haven’t gotten around to picking one up before. I’m kind of surprised. Science fiction has some great small presses out there, and Subterranean is one of them.
One other blogged review:
Title: Clementine
Author: Cherie Priest
Cover creator: Jon Foster
Series: The Clockwork Century; 2
Imprint / publisher: Subterranean Press
Format: Advance Readers Copy
Length: 201 p.
Publication date: May 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1-59606-308-2
