Boneshaker

In an alternate 1880s, a mad inventor's drilling engine—the Boneshaker—cracked open the earth beneath Seattle and released the Blight, a toxic gas that kills those who breathe it and turns the dead into "rotters." Sixteen years on, a great wall seals off the poisoned, undead-infested city. Outside it lives Briar Wilkes, widow of the man blamed for the disaster, raising their teenage son Ezekiel alone. When Zeke slips under the wall to clear his father's name, Briar follows him into the ruins—a lightless city of rotters, air pirates, and criminal overlords—and toward the buried truth of her own past. First of the Clockwork Century steampunk novels.