I'm really beginning to enjoy the series for the well-drawn examples of the world of an extremely drawn out American civil war and a time period where technological advances now border on the peculiarly modernish Japanese fascination with huge walking robots. Most fascinating about this novel was the scenes aboard the train with the same name as the novel. I really felt like I was reading a travelogue that just happened to have airship crashes, zombie outbreaks, train chase scenes, and lots of spies. It was a plan dear to read. I never knew a nurse in the civil war could get herself into so much trouble just getting on commercial passenger rail. 
 Now that I've gone through three novels I'm not complaining as I had complained with the first one. Things don't really require resolution, the way the author is placing us deep into the story as it progresses. It's not about the tying up of loose ends. It's about showing us the world and watching how the characters in it survive or don't. I should have guessed it when we're dealing with zombies, but surprisingly enough, zombies are just for tension in the novels, not the main topic. That's a good thing, by the way. I much prefer to see character novels over a world war z treatment. 
 I really enjoyed reading about our nurse and her adventure, and I think I enjoyed this one all the better for remembering our erstwhile spy from book 2. It was curious and fascinating to see how we got from point a to point e. I've developed a lot of faith in the writer to know she'll get us where she hints we'll go. I suspect she could draw out some unlikely characters in the future to get some other big things accomplished. (Even if the big things are tangential to the promise of the book.) 
 On to the next!