Paperback, 384 pages

English language

Published May 24, 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference Publishers.

ISBN:
978-0-547-55004-6
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4 stars (1 review)

When Jake Limberleg brings his traveling medicine show to a small Missouri town in 1913, thirteen-year-old Natalie senses that something is wrong and, after investigating, learns that her love of automata and other machines make her the only one who can set things right.

4 editions

Review of 'The Boneshaker' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

A small town set at a crossroads in Missouri gets turned upside down when a traveling medicine show appears unexpectedly one day. Natalie, the daughter of the local mechanic, is fascinated, and also repelled, by the carnival-esque show and all the mechanical do-dads. But all kinds of weird things make Natalie think twice about the show-shadowy conversations, men with hypnotic and headache-causing eyes, and Natalie's strange new abilities to SEE things she shouldn't be able to know about. It's a fun, and slightly scary, steam punk story for preteens. I really enjoyed it, even though there were some parts that were slightly confusing. At some points it felt like the conclusion took too long to happen.

Subjects

  • Children's fiction
  • Supernatural, fiction
  • Bicycles and bicycling, fiction
  • Demonology, fiction
  • Missouri, fiction
  • Medicine, fiction