Thursday, October 14, 2010

Dreadnought

So Jordan and I went to Yarnes Ignoble after class Wednesday so I could buy The Windup Girl (which by the way is not my idea of an easy read...8 pages in and I have NO idea what is going on. Back cover is useless as well. I hope it gets better) So we're searching for this book in the scifi section and both of us notice another Cherie Priest book that looked identical to Boneshaker. This one is called Dreadnought. Though we expected it to be a spin off or sequel, it seemed to be unrelated to Boneshaker. Hopefully, when I get free time (meaning when I graduate) I'll be able to read it. What caught my attention was the title. For those of you that are not history geeks, the Dreadnought was, at least in part, to blame for the start of World War I. Dreadnoughts were extreme battle ships that all the great powers were struggling to produce in the years leading up to WWI. Now Dreadnoughts didn't show up until shortly after the Victorian period (which is obviously the central era of the steampunk genre) technically came to a close. Queen Victoria died in 1901 and the first Dreadnaught The Royal Navy's appropriately titled Dreadnaught was launched in 1906. I am still interested to see how these behemoth, modern warships tie into Priest's steampunk novel. If anybody beats me to actually reading it, please let me know how it is.

7 comments:

Courtney said...

There is another book that is supposed to be something of a sequel to Boneshaker called Clementine. I think it's about the air ship pirates from what I read at amazon.com. For some reason, however, the book is $48.00, which seems a bit expensive.

Katy said...

Versus the $15 I spent on Boneshaker? I think I'll pass ;)

salsa said...

Wow, Now i need to start a wish list.

I would like to point out that the H.M.S. Dreadnought is not in a separate class of warship, but is a battleship. That said, this seems to be interesting, and the era it was built in would make this more of a dieselpunk story, although the battleships of WWI were steam powered and fueled by coal.

As for Windup Girl it gets better the first couple of scenes make no sense, but it clears up by page 30.

Katy said...

Yes Adam the HMS Dreadnought itself was a unique battleship. But a dreadnought is a type of ship as well. Look it up. I'll even bring my history book for you. I'm a history major and in fact just learned about this in my history class this semester. I think I would know.

Katy said...

And I quote "Germany's enormous warship construction program since 1898 required Britain to construct a powerful new class of battleships, Dreadnoughts, in order to keep control of the seas".

Paxton , Robert O. Europe in the Twentieth Century. 4th ed. Toronto, Canada: Thomas Learning, Inc., 2005. 57. Print.

Jordan said...

I think we should read Dreadnought instead of Wind-up Girl.... Maybe I'll understand what's going on. Then again I haven't read nearly as much of this book as I should have by now. Sigh.

Bailey Carpenter said...

Woahhhh bro drama on the blog posts haha. And boo windup girl. Boo. I keep finding so many other things to do besides read it.