Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Synopsis From Back Cover:

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenage boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.
 
Fantastic.  Amazing.  Brilliant.  Spectacular.  Thrilling.  I could go on and on but I think too many adjectives gets annoying after a while.  This was only my third foray into steam punk and I loved it even more than my first time.  It's rather like sex that way, it's gets better as you gain experience.
 
Boneshaker is a brilliantly told story of what happens when family secrets start to eat away to the point they have to come out.  The fact that these secrets will shake Briar and her son to the core and force them to deal with zombies, mad scientists, and air pirates while juggling the truth just made it that much better. 
 
The action is intense and once it gets started it never really slows down.  I can't recall one moment in the book that I found to be boring or dragging.  Thankfully though the action never got in the way of the storytelling.  The author did an amazing job of meshing the action with the journey itself and by the end, both Briar and her son were able to reach a point in their lives where they were able to deal with the past and make a new life for themselves in the future.
 
I'm slowly getting sucked into the steam punk world and I can't wait for the next experience.