Cherie Priest's 2009 Boneshaker introduced the "Clockwork Century," a steampunk-flavored alternate 19th-century where the Civil War went on for decades and downtown Seattle had been decimated by the release of a subterraneous gas, known as "the Blight," that turned victims into zombie-like "rotters." While the sequels Dreadnought and Ganymede expanded the fictional territory across much of North America, Priest circles back to the Pacific Northwest in The Inexplicables.
When one of Boneshaker's central characters, Zeke Wilkes, wanted to get into the walled-off Seattle, he was shown the way by an orphan named Rector. Six months later, Rector assumes Zeke must be dead. Thrown out of the orphanage on his 18th birthday, Rector decides to break into the walled city to find his friend's corpse. He soon realizes Zeke is thriving among the outcast society in Seattle's underground tunnels.
Priest uses Rector's status as a new arrival to introduce new readers to characters from the previous three novels, but in a way that won't bore longtime fans. Zeke and his mechanically inclined pal Houjin introduce Rector to his new community, then help him when he's recruited by the local crime lord to investigate a possible incursion by rival gangs. Just as Rector and his friends roam up to the edges of their territory, Priest probes the world that she's created, teasing out new aspects of familiar landmarks, then laying out early signs of the next direction--because it's clear that there's at least one more installment of the Clockwork Century coming. --Ron Hogan