Sadly, I just didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped. A lot of the appeal of the first book was the unusual setting - Seattle, walled off, full of toxic gas, and overrun by flesh-eating zombies. There was lots of action and tension, and Briar Wilkes was a kick-ass heroine out to rescue her son.

Dreadnought gives us another strong heroine. Nurse Mercy has been working at a Confederate hospital while her husband fights for the Union (darn those border romances!). When her husband is killed in battle and she gets a message saying that her estranged father is dying in the Washington territory, she sets off on a cross-country adventure to reconcile with the daddy she can barely remember.

Adventure is a bit strong of a word, though. There are moments of action, and plenty of danger, but it just doesn't feel as intense as Boneshaker. The main problem for me is that most of the action takes place on a train. Steam-powered engines are inherently steampunk, yes, but they're not as exciting as underground cities and zombie battles. The heroine spends much of her journey bored, and so do we.

To be honest, this book felt a bit rushed and unfinished. The idea of a cross-country journey through an alternate-history, Civil War era US aboard a train pulled by the Union's most infamous war machine sounds exciting, especially when you add that there are two cars with mysterious contents, and some shady characters with uncertain allegiances. But it just failed to grab me. Most of the characters didn't seem well-developed, the story was rather episodic, and errors and bits of bad writing abound, as if the editor didn't quite give it the care it deserved.

I want to like Cherie Priest's books. I really do. She has some great ideas, moments of awesome writing, and female protagonists that a girl can really get behind. She's possibly the only female author I've read who doesn't put romantic elements in her books (OK, maybe KJ Parker should be on that list, too. The Engineer Trilogy may have been about a man doing anything to return to his wife, but it wasn't exactly romantic). When she does get around to writing an action scene, it's well-done. And I'm going to a book signing of hers at the Wild Wild West Con, so I'd really like to be able to say "I love your work." I just don't.

Fans of the steampunk genre may want to pick up Dreadnought anyway, if only because it's interesting to read a book that paints the South in a sympathetic light without being racist (at the point this book takes place, the war has become more about revenge and not giving up than slavery or states' rights). But I can't recommend it as a way to get people interested in steampunk, or as an introduction to Priest's writing.