Customer Reviews

Ghost Ocean

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

About a year ago I was in my local bookstore and saw a little mass market sticking out of alignment from the rest of the books. At the time it seemed like it was beckoning me. The book turned out to be the most ambitious steampunk novel I've read called Whitechapel Gods by S.M. Peters which was his debut novel. I don't think it got noticed as much as it deserved when first released. The striking cover is perfect for the story which evokes a Victorian England where there is a disease turning people into machines. If you are a fan of steampunk than by all means get yourself a copy of Whitechapel Gods. With Ghost Ocean we see Peters turn his able sextant to Urban Fantasy.

Judging by its cover of a pretty girl in a leather jacket it could be lost in the sea of other Urban Fantasies, but it is definitely a cut above the average. Ghost Ocean is very strange with the most bizarre cast of characters placed in the fictitious town of St. Ives where it is almost always raining and monsters of all kind dwell. Told from multiple view points and jumping around in time and memory it could take a little while to get a handle of what is going on just in time for Peters to change the rules, however it is well worth the effort. The story completely fakes you out from what you think is going to be a daughter's search for her father's killer, but is more about the ancient evils that surrounds Te, the main protagonist.

Te is a paranormal investigator in training to Babu Cherian who worked with her father before his death five years prior. Along the way you learn Te has been held in the dark about nearly everything and everyone in her life as her father wanted to shield her from this life. It is actually surprising how well adjusted she is given her upbringing by a clearly uncaring mother and a mostly absent father. My one caveat is Te's relationship to Jack, her doting neighbor, in which she leads him around like a puppy into trouble time and time again. But to Te it is all about filling the gap of loneliness inside of her and Jack also provides her a connection she needs to stay grounded.

After a very powerful monster escapes its prison Te is brought in on the secrets of her father's past and into Babu's mysterious group of monster hunters in search of the creature. My favorite character from the odd group is probably Munin who is mathematical genius/mad scientist with a toy ray gun. All over St. Ives there are creepy crawlies aching to be set free. The grotesque description of many of the creatures, most notably Bird will stay with you for a long while as will the freak people that surround her. In some ways Ghost Ocean is a dark version of American Gods with Peters' use of mythology and his own inventiveness able to make it stand apart.

Ghost Ocean is a wild adventure that keeps pushing harder and further to up the stakes. Fans of Neil Gaiman, Simon R. Green, or Christopher Golden should definitely find Ghost Ocean engaging and fresh. If you are a guy who loves Urban Fantasy, but have trouble finding new books beyond Dresden and John Taylor give this one a try. It is clear that Peters has a long and bright future in front of him as his writing has improved between books. I'll be checking out anything he writes in the future. I'm hopeful Peters gets moved up to a hardcover or at least trade paper release for his next book as I'd love to have copies that will hold up on my shelves.

I hate to give a negative review. However, I began this book with high hopes. I read the reviews and overall they seemed positive. The reality is that the book just didn't live up to my expectations. To be fair, I've only managed to get about 2/3 of the way through. Perhaps the conclusion is dazzling. As I hate not finishing a book, I will eventually get around to finishing it. I don't have high hopes.

In a nutshell, the plot began interestingly enough with a young paranormal investigator mentored by an older friend of the family stumbling upon a dead body. However, the book didn't pursue that angle but veered off into an entirely different direction... one that I found repetitive and boring. I couldn't relate to the characters in any meaningful way. I found them rather two dimensional and unpleasant. Don't get me wrong. I like characters that are flawed. These characters were so flawed I found it difficult to relate to any of them in a positive way.

Nothing really grabbed my attention or sustained my interest.

I'm not well-read enough to know if Peters is a shameless rip-off artist or just an eclectic researcher. There are deep imprints of Neil Gaiman and Lovecraft in this book, as well as some references to miscellaneous demigods and mythological concepts from assorted ends of the globe. So I *think* Peters is just drawing from the same sources as Gaiman, and maybe being unduly influenced by his style.

Doesn't entirely matter. "Ghost Ocean" is a slick read. It moves along so damn fast that only when you put it down do you realize, not much is happening. There's a lot of scene, but not a lot of plot, you know? This is essentially a coming-of-age story, with a lot of peripheral characters thrown in--human and not--including the obligatory absentee dad and unloving mother. Peters tries to dress up that formula with a thick glaze of mythology and urban fantasy, but unfortunately the result is only that: a stock plot with a coating of shine. It never transcends to something new.

As others have mentioned, the title is woefully inappropriate. There are no "ghosts" in the Victorian sense--except for one of the monster-fighting team who happens to be discorporeal but still hanging around. Te and her boss/guardian, the HORRIBLY named Babu, apparently make a living as ghost-hunters, but you never really see them doing any ghost-hunting, because the very first job they go on launches us onto the first of several high-speed treadmills propelling the plot along. There's no moment when you or the heroine think, Hey, things are weird, but there could be another explanation for this. It's straightaway into "the world is not what you believe it to be" and on with the phantasmagoria. I found this slightly disorienting, but other folks may like it.

Plot-wise, I think Peters tends to over-foreshadow. I may be jaded, but I knew mostly what was going to happen long before any of the big reveals. That let out some of the emotional air for me. On the other hand, there were some nice moments when the monsters shed their human skins, and I got little fangirl thrills at recognizing the creatures I read about in Time Life's _Other Worlds_ when I was a kid.

The wrap-up works well enough from the heroine's point of view. Her discovery of herself has some nice moments. Not all the loose ends are tied up, so I would not be surprised if Miss Evangeline shows up in a sequel some day. The supporting characters are not resolved quite as satisfactorily. This gives the novel some verisimilitude, but wasn't as finite as I would have liked.

(Slight spoiler: Eventually we learn that the "ghost ocean" is a compilation of all humanity's worst impulses--sort of all the bad souls throughout history amalgamated together into a weapon against the supernatural. But you've got to squint to get that interpretation, and I still don't think it was the greatest title.)

My recommendation? It didn't make me mad. I didn't feel as if I'd wasted my time or been lied to. Sometimes I just need the taste of prose in my mouth, and this delivered.

I'll say up front I'm a fan of the Harry Dresden novels, for their mix of magic/fantasy with action and humor. Ghost Ocean initially gave me a sinking feeling--this is not a story with humor, it's more horror and tragedy with a gritty heroine who survives a rite-of-passage coming of age helping out her ghostbuster godfather. If you like the Hellboy comic books or movies, you will be right at home with this story. It's sort of like what you'd get if Hellboy were crossed with Lovecraft and Beto Hernandez' Palomar comic stories, transposed to a rainy, vaguely-described part of the American Northwest. The plot is driven by the assembly of a Seven-Samurai-type posse of monster hunters, including a mumbly mathematical metaphysicist with a working ray gun, a houngan's ghost, an albino witch who wields Tarot cards like shuriken, and a creepy drugged-up pedophile vampire whose rank breath smells of raw hamburger and cigarettes. Ick. The realization of the setting is intricate and satisfying; I started off wondering if I'd accidentally started with Book 2 of a series, since the reader is plopped in media res. By halfway through, the big picture begins to resolve very satisfyingly. Was not my usual rollicking-humor fare, but I was glad I picked it up and look forward to other works by S.M. Peters.

A fast-paced urban fantasy which pulls from a wide variety of sources. It's very electic, sourcing everything from Faerie legends to Greek myth, to Lovecraft. Te Evangeline is a likable protagonist, no angst or constant whining from her, although she's got enough reasons. She spends more time thinking than sleeping around. The cover blurb is a bit misleading -- there's no investigation of how real the paranormal is: she's almost immediately thrown into a supernatural war. A three vs a four because it does suffer from the super-power syndrome where it's not enough for the story to put her friends or family's lives at stake, it has to be a near-apocalypse.

I wasn't really expecting much when I picked this up. The synopsis I thought sounded interesting but I got definate vibes of "this is going to be a romance novel in disguise, isn't it?" And I was thrilled to be wrong. For starters, this is not a book for those who are looking to renew their faith in humanity. Nor is it for the squeemish. Nor is it for those looking for puppy dogs and roses at the end of the day. This book goes to some pretty dark places, some from which it does not return.
The main character is deeply human (well, sort of) and everyone carries their own scars, good and bad alike. The author has a firm grasp on the concealing elements of mystery and a downright morbid talent for the macabre. Something I did enjoy was the way the story progressed on several fronts, watching how each character dealt with the overwhelming sense of impending chaos and hopelessness overshadowing their every action.
All in all, this book was a gem. A twisted, sort of terrifying gem but a gem nonetheless. I definately recommend this to anyone with a taste for dark, urban fantasy and a love for the unusual.

If not the best Dark Fantasy novel I read in 2009, than easily the most accessible one. While the author went the cliched P.I. route for the main character, she never really investigates anything because other problems start far too soon. The mythos here is quite original, the characters well developed and the genres blending perfectly. I was captivated by S.M. Peters writing style, and more so by his imagination.

The thing that really stood out to me in this book was the amount of culturally diverse spirits S.M. Peters was able to pack into this book. From Kitsune to the metaphysics guy to the Muse, to the Tuatha De . . . it really felt like a whole world's worth of supernatural beings were employed. For that alone, I was kind of impressed.

Other than that, Te's journey into what she would become was both satisfying and kept me turning pages up until the beautifully handled end. The book can either be as 'deep' or as 'shallow' as you want/need it to be and I love how Peters toys with the very basic concepts of who and what a person is.

I must admit, I do wish Amazon let one give a half star review - I did waver between four stars and five because I think it deserves more along 4.5 stars than five since the book did start off a little slow. I had some problems immersing myself into the flow of the world but once I did I enjoyed it immensely. I think the one warning I would give is that this is one of those books where you wish there was a prequel to give you all of the back story that Te and Babu go on about, of what Te's father and Babu did years ago, the activities of their former team that involves the previous Kitsune chase and leads up to that fateful night with Te's father. It would definitely make for an enjoyable book on its own, because this world has that much work and mythology put into it, and the characters reverberate with you that much. They are flawed and realistic, struggling to do what they can and in their own way for various reasons. The author does a very good job of fleshing them out, giving them motives and weaknesses that come across as realistic and understandable and in most cases sympathetic. He takes a lot of mythology, a thread I'm seeing more and more lately in urban fantasy, yet ties it together in a logical manner. There are a lot of secrets in Te's world, and as she gets more drawn in to uncovering them I found the novel more engrossing. I would love to read more about this world.

I'm really liking this author. I am not a steampunk fan and found "Whitechapel Gods" to be great. I bought Ghost Ocean based purely on the depth of "Whitechapel". These are thinking peoples books and will NOT be appreciated by the person perusing for the next Anita Blake series. You have to be able to work through the mysteries and see the story through the narrators own limited visions. Publishers are really doing a disservice to these authors with the covers you see now. They in no way are showing the story and what the book tries to be. And yes, the synopsis on the book is equally terrible, go with the Hatters review above. Good reading.