Ghosts of Manhattan [Paperback]

George Mann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2010

INTRODUCING THE WORLD'S FIRST STEAMPUNK SUPERHERO

1926. New York. The Roaring Twenties. Jazz. Flappers. Prohibition. Coal-powered cars. A cold war with a British Empire that still covers half of the globe. Yet things have developed differently to established history. America is in the midst of a cold war with a British Empire that has only just buried Queen Victoria, her life artificially preserved to the age of 107. Coal-powered cars roar along roads thick with pedestrians, biplanes take off from standing with primitive rocket boosters and monsters lurk behind closed doors and around every corner. This is a time in need of heroes. It is a time for The Ghost. A series of targeted murders are occurring all over the city, the victims found with ancient Roman coins placed on their eyelids after death. The trail appears to lead to a group of Italian-American gangsters and their boss, who the mobsters have dubbed 'The Roman'. However, as The Ghost soon discovers, there is more to The Roman than at first appears, and more bizarre happenings that he soon links to the man, including moss-golems posing as mobsters and a plot to bring an ancient pagan god into the physical world in a cavern beneath the city. As The Ghost draws nearer to The Roman and the center of his dangerous web, he must battle with foes both physical and supernatural and call on help from the most unexpected of quarters if he is to stop The Roman and halt the imminent destruction of the city.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mann (The Affinity Bridge) combines the trendy superhero and steampunk genres, but his cardboard characters and laughable dialogue (I had never loved, until I loved you) never attain even the level of parody. In an alternate 1927 Manhattan, a deadly vigilante nicknamed the Ghost stalks the city, attacking the employees of the Roman, a mysterious mobster. The Roman's men have been committing horrific acts of violence, drawing the attention of police detective Felix Donovan. Also dragged into the plot are carefree playboy Gabriel and his lover, Celeste, who seems to exist solely to sleep with the hero and then be sacrificed to move the plot along. The action sequences are solid, though excessively gory, but there's little that comic fans haven't seen done more impressively a dozen times before. (Apr.)
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Review

"Ghosts of Manhattan is a brilliant hybrid of superhero/vigilante tale, film noir, and 1920s decadence... It is an exceedingly dark character study of damaged characters attempting to make the world a better place than it has been for them. It is a portrait of a world just one step removed from our reality, a New York that never was but could have been. It is a thematic rumination on the nature of heroism, blessed with exquisite prose, twisty mystery (one revelation in particular almost made me want to start reading all over again, to note the earlier clues), genuinely thrilling suspense, and cracking violence--a beautifully crafted novel whose dark heart is counterbalanced with small moments of unexpected tenderness. And dirigibles." --RobWillReview.com

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Product Details

• Paperback: 237 pages
• Publisher: Pyr (April 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1616141948
• ISBN-13: 978-1616141943
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #689,296 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars quick-paced but not a lot of bite, little bit flat, April 8, 2010

By 

B. Capossere (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ghosts of Manhattan (Paperback)

I've been lukewarm to George Mann's Victorian steampunk novels set in London, finding them mostly adequate: quick-paced but a bit flat and somewhat too beholden to cinematic cliche. They are intermittently entertaining and lively, but never quite get all the way to good. Ghosts of Manhattan, his new novel, set this time in America, is similar, though perhaps a step above, if only a step.

It's 1926 and America is in a cold war with Great Britain (the British Empire still stretches over much of the world). The city if filled with coal-powered cars and rocket-propelled biplanes. It's also filled with crooks, particularly an especially violent one called The Roman, head of a group of gangsters and the person seemingly responsible for a run of targeted murders, each victim left with a pair of authentic Roman coins on their eyelids.

The police seem powerless and so into the fray steps The Ghost, a non-superpowered masked hero who makes it his mission to find and stop The Roman (whose motivation isn't quite what anybody expected). Also along for the plot is a wealthy, playboy type; the singer with whom he has a relationship; and a cop who refuses to be corrupted by the Roman's wealth and power.

As with the London novels, the book is fast-paced with few distractions from the main plot. The Ghost's identity is predictable and I'm hoping it wasn't meant to be much of a surprise. The character has a dark tinge to him based on his past which offers a good level of depth in an otherwise depth-free story. The hero himself has a fond familiarity to him, a bit of a nostalgic throwback to pre-superhero days.
The book moves along familiar tracks until toward the end when it spins off in another direction (almost genre) entirely. There's little time to think much about what's going on, for either the reader or the characters and so the plot, while quick-moving, is pleasantly if a bit flatly entertaining, though not particularly compelling.

The book suffers from some flat and trite language/scenes as well. In one scene, for instance, the hero's flechettes "strike home" twice within a few paragraphs, shortly before we get the stock: hero is about to be killed but the bad guy intervenes so he can "do it himself" (hint: he doesn't). There are several instances of these issues throughout the book, as well as some seeming contradictions in character as well. And while an alternate Jazz Age (complete with a Gatby-type) seems ripe for some rich description, similar to the London books the setting is a bit disappointing.

The book's quick pace and likable character make up for the flaws to some extent--you're speeding along so quickly rooting for the good guys that you don't stop too often to notice the flat aspects, but as with his earlier books, the book goes down well but doesn't leave you feeling fully satisfied.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Awful pastiche, June 15, 2010

By 

J. Shurin "carnivore" (London) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ghosts of Manhattan (Paperback)

Awful pastiche, 15 Jun 2010
By J. Shurin "carnivore" (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ghosts of Manhattan (Paperback)
Billed as the first "steampunk superhero", Ghosts of Manhattan inventively features a playboy millionaire with a hidden side - a dark vigilante.

When Gideon Cross isn't prowling the roof tops of a fictional New York analogue, he's doing his best to look frivolous at society parties. Fortunately, he's got allies: a slinky female friend with a mysterious criminal past, a cunning butler and a police inspector that will bend the rules to protect his family.

Inventive genius.

All sarcasm aside, I'm not sure what New York has done to attract such abuse from a genre writer, but it must have been truly, truly awful.

One of the more spectacular let-downs is that, for the first half of the book, the author never actually, flat-out says that "Gabriel Cross" is the Ghost. This may be the worst-kept secret in genre history. In fact, it is so blindingly-obvious that Cross is the Ghost, I began to develop optimistic delusions that the book might be doing something really, really clever. The feeling grew, until, on the tantalizingly edge of almost being perhaps slightly interesting - the big reveal comes out: the playboy millionaire actually is the gloomy vigilante! I look forward to the sequel, when we learn that Darth Vader is Luke's father, Rosebud is a sled and, against all odds, the sun actually comes up in the morning.

As a result, I can't tell if Ghosts of Manhattan was written in a weird, parallel universe where Batman never existed, or if the writer just forgot to mention the Ghost's identity six chapter earlier.

Incidentally (and unsurprisingly), the love interest is just plain awful - the picture of regressive genre behaviour. She shags the playboy millionaire without actually liking him (presumably because she can femininely-intuit his inner moodiness - always appealing to the ladeez), she's got no will of her own, she gets rescued at least three times, and she's central to the "plot" because she's essentially a McGuffin with boobs. And, no, I can't remember her name, which, frankly, says a lot.

The steampunk elements, such as they are, are seemingly added as afterthoughts - like someone went back through the book and added the word "coal-powered" at random. ("Quick, throw another shovelful on the Three-Turbined Plot-Churner, we've got books to sell!"). If you've got the gumption to stick with the book in its entirety, there's a strange, semi-Dunsanian (I'm not comparing any part of this book to Lovecraft) ending that involves tentacles. As steampunk and the supernatural are now inexorably linked, that should count for something. Still, like the bi-planes, the coal-cars and the near-immortal Queen Victoria, the tentacle-monsters really don't have anything to do with anything else in the book, which, frankly, is to be expected. Someone along the way went wild with the bumper book of sub-genre stickers and converted this from bat-trash into a steampunk sensation.

This is a bad book. A weirdly bad book. I don't understand how it got printed, and I don't understand why other reviewers don't seem to loathe it as violently as I do. I see this book as everything wrong with fantasy - it is regressive, plagiaristic, boring world-building without a hint of character or original thought. Specifically, I see this book as everything wrong with steampunk - a sad legacy of an original creative concept that's been shamelessly watered-down and generally stamped-upon.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Let me tell you about my character..., August 25, 2010

By 

Jones (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ghosts of Manhattan (Paperback)

I was dragged in by the beautiful cover and the promise of pulp, and was spat back out by the amateurish writing and predictable cliches.

This feels like fan-fiction, written by a role-playing gamer, about his "awesome cool character based of the Batman and the Shadow, but it's like...totally original!"

There is no engaging mystery, just schlock. There is no engaging characterization, just carbon copies of other hero tropes. Foreshadowing is swung like a sledgehammer so there's no surprises, just the dull drudge of bland characters doing bland things.

This is one to avoid.