The one-sentence version: this was an interesting steampunk novel that would have been more interesting without the zombies. 
 In a little more detail: the world that Priest imagines in Boneshaker is intricate and detailed, recognizably nineteenth century but not our own nineteenth century. The characters are flawed in plausible ways, and I really appreciated that the primary relationship in the book was familial instead of being romantic, for once; Briar's relationship to her teenage son was strained and awkward in realistic, human ways, even when their problems were more severe than the ones most parents and teens have to face. The exciting steampunky possibilities of technology (airships! fabulous drilling machines!) are balanced by the toxic cost of industrialization. The racial tensions of US history are taken into account instead of conveniently ignored. The whole thing hangs together for me pretty well. 
 Except for the zombies. 
 The rest of the book feels like it works on real-life, plausible logic, but the zombies take a considerable amount of handwaving. They're not a rational trope, and otherwise this is a rational book; there's no magic system, so having corpses get back up and shuffle around hungry for living flesh -- for years after their death, refusing to rot away completely despite the damp, decay-encouraging climate -- doesn't make any sense. They felt glaringly out of place against the worldbuilding. 
 I would happily read more in this setting; I'm interested in picking up Clementine, which appears to star one of my favorite secondary characters from Boneshaker on adventures of his own. But I'm hoping it'll resist the temptation to use awkward supernatural elements this way.