RECENT READING: Clementine, Cherie Priest
I started describing this book to my partner as I was approaching the midpoint, running through the key details: steampunk western; Escaped slaves turned dirigible pirates; a female spy forced to become a Pinkerton because she’s too famous for the South to want her anymore; MAD SCIENCE SUPER-WEAPONS! My partner basically asked me to stop and put it on her to-read pile before I’d finished the list. Clementine is part of Priest’s Clockwork Century series, which started with 2009’s Steampunk Zombie Western Boneshaker and rolled through another 5 novels and two novellas. This is one of the latter, originally released as a special edition by Subterranean press and now out in paperback for everyone who wants to catch up. As a novella, it’s not going to be for everyone. It’s definitely a long novella–I’d estimate that it runs close to 40,000 words–but it packs a lot of story, action beats, and two POV characters into that count. The result is
