Customer Reviews

Ghosts of Manhattan

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

"He was going for a gun. Today...today we do it your way."
- Detective Donovan

I hate it when a reviewer starts out a dissenting review with "I tried to like this book, I really did." It's been used sincerely, and I respect people who can, but it's also one of those things people use when they want to say "Hey, I'm on your side, so take this bad review of a book seriously!" along with "I've been a fan of (Insert genre/author here), but this is..." and trashing the book.

The problem being, I really should like Ghosts of Manhattan. It's a superhero story set in a steampunk version of the pulp era. There really isn't another alley that one could say was mine...I'm a huge fan of steampunk, Boardwalk Empire, The Shadow, and detective stories. On top of that, George Mann is a widely acclaimed author whose book The Affinity Bridge is considered a classic of the genre. But Ghosts of Manhattan, to put it mildly, is ridiculous crap. And with a declaration like that, I'm prepared to back it up. So, without any further ado, let's get to it.

Ghosts of Manhattan is the story of a steam-powered version of Manhattan-- Cars have funnels on them, airships dot the skies, and holographic advertisements are common. Think a futuristic city, but done completely with retro overtones. In this city, the main antagonist is a crimeboss known only as The Roman, a man who inexplicably seems to do a decent share of his own dirty work and leaves a pair of denarii on the victims' eyes as a calling card. His right hand man, Gideon, holds sway over New York City with a supercharged (we know this because it has three funnels on it. Three!) car, an army of moss golems, and a custom-made pistol. Opposing him are the one honest cop in the city, a lounge singer with a secret (of course), and the hero known as "The Ghost", a technological genius and former war vet. Also embroiled in the mess is Gabriel Cross, a wealthy playboy and you can see where this is going from there. The Roman turns out to be a threat to all existence with some unsettling ties to otherworldly powers (of course), and The Ghost, the lounge singer, and the Honest Cop(tm) must band together against the forces of darkness to save the city and perhaps the world (of course).

I suppose the first problem with this Lovecraftian abomination of a book is that it insults the reader's intelligence. To give an example, let's start with the character of The Ghost. Here we have someone like Bruce Wayne, with one difference: Everyone knows Bruce Wayne is Batman. People who haven't even seen or heard much about Batman know that Bruce Wayne is Batman. It goes without saying. That's part of writing about superheroes-- you let the reader in on the game early and then you let them tag along to interesting places after that.

So why the hell would George Mann, in creating a Batman-style character, want to try and mislead everyone into thinking that the billionaire playboy war vet isn't the masked superhero raising hell and shooting lethal explosive darts into mobsters' heads? I mean, he could be trying to be original, but come on-- when there's a superhero and there's a billionaire playboy with some questionable nighttime activities, everyone knows the score. No, I believe that George Mann just thinks his entire readership is dumber than primordial syrup and is willing to believe that they're different people until the big reveal comes up to shock and surprise them. In this regard, Mann is like a magician who very obviously palms a coin and then tries to explain it as magic when he pretends (with an equally obvious motion) to pull it out of someone's ear.


In an earlier occurrence, I stated that steampunk was:

"...a pretty easy job: Just throw around some robots with boilers and some higher technology, and suddenly, boom. Instant steampunk book. Bonus points if you use the word "airship" twice in the same chapter."



No one should have any problem with this, normally. After all, it's kind of how the genre works. Nothing wrong with the genre working, right? Well, it's a little harder than I originally outlined. You see, the setpieces and props have to actually connect to the story, not exist in spite of it. It's insulting to write a story with a cool setting and then barely use the setting in places here and there. Yes, the Ghost uses a flechette gun, jet boots, and some pretty cool goggles, and the "holotubes" are a nice touch, but everyone else uses a regular ol' gun, and even the cars are fairly par for everything, save Gideon's. In other words, Mann takes my earlier description of steampunk writing and absuses it like a redheaded stepchild to such a degree that once again, it's like he's insulting the audience. That sort of lazy, dishonest behaviour simply won't cut it. No author should ever treat his readers like this.

The characterization is terrible, too. Those archetypes I mentioned earlier? Yeah, that's the whole character for each of those. It's like the writer went through a list of every possible trope he could and took the basest possible meaning for each. What makes it worse is that the hero is named Gabriel Cross, and one of the villains is Gideon Reece, which leads to some confusion, given the biblical names that begin with G and the fact that they are frequently referred to as "Gabriel" and "Gideon". These are not interesting people, or even fully-formed characters. They are stand-up carboard cutouts that move and talk vaguely like people. They are freaking pod people. This is not what an author does. This is what a lazy mouth-breather with a book to write does.

Without any characterization, the plot can boil down to "people run around a city, doing random crap and hoping it makes sense to anyone". There's even a biplane chase scene in the final third of the novel. The idiot screwed up a biplane chase. When it happened, I had to stop and wonder "Huh. What the hell is this doing in here? It's screwing up the book." I then went on to wonder exactly why a biplane chase had materialized out of thin air, instead of occurring organically in the novel itself. I never wonder what an action sequence is doing in a book. That's part of what I like about books-- the action sequences. Those nervous moments between characters and how they react to things.

And speaking of missed action sequences, the climax is, pardon my language, shite. It is the syphilis-infected needles on a junk heap of disgusting offal that I refuse to get into the specifics of in such a classy and respectable establishment as this. The massive doomsday portal had a gigantic "OFF" switch all the heroes seem to miss until after the big world-destroying creature was summoned, the love interest is sacrificed for no reason other than she said so earlier and the plot wants to make her carry through with it, and the villain who has been set up for the better part of two hundred pages is offed from behind. By a single bullet to the head. After previously wiping the floor with Our Hero. That shouldn't happen. Once again, it's the mark of a lazy author when the villain's henchman is given a much bigger (by an exponential magnitude) sendoff than anyone in the book and the head villain is given a bullet in the head in the basement. That there was a massive and horrifying event before it does not clear this of an anticlimax.

I suppose there are good things here and there...the ideas presented are interesting, and this had the potential to be a really cool steampunk superhero pulp kinda story. If it wasn't lazy, insulting, and not worth the paper that it was printed on. And some day I will find George Mann, and after I quiet the urge to smash in his face and sensitive private areas for writing such offal, I will buy him a drink and explain to him exactly how offended I am by his travesty of a novel, and how he, long considered an author of note and merit in the field, has let me down. Then I will probably storm off.

For those of you who decided to skip the large reams of scathing invective, I did not like this book. In fact, I do not even I do not recommend it to anyone, nor would I ever. Avoid it at all costs. That this even was published by a decent fantasy book outlet makes me weep for the publishing industry and apprehensive about what quality books we are getting in the age of ebooks, self publishing, and the like. It's boring, insulting, forced, and none of it makes the slightest bit of sense. There's a plot in there, but not one anyone would feel particularly obligated to follow. Please, please avoid this book. For my sake if not for yours.

I bought this book because I thought steam punk was an interesting genre, I love vigilante heroes, and the cover art was amazing. What I read was a complete rip off of Batman. Rich playboy? check. Dark vigilante alter ego? check. Loyal butler? check. Police officer ally? check. Mysterious, one note vixen? check.

However, it is not the generic nature of the character that annoyed me, but his often humorous ineptitude. He fails to stop an innocent death at a bank robbery (seriously, they're insured, and it's only money) a store owner being bludgeoned to death, and a museum being ransacked. Also, as an early reviewer mentioned, the steam punk elements are after thoughts. This same story could be told in the early 1900's with only minor alterations. The villains are paper thin much like the heroes who try and fight them. There are a bunch of transdemensional creatures added at the end, but at this point it's too late to save this unintentional parody of the superhero genre.

This book is so bad I had to check to make sure it wasn't translated (badly) from another language. It was so bad I gave up and read the in-flight magazine instead. The author has almost no original ideas and you end up giggling at all the cliches. A rich playboy who is secretly a scary avenger of the night? Sound familiar anyone? It gets worse.

It's so badly written (and I mean the actual words and sentences, not just the story-line) you wonder if this isn't some high-school kid's project. I don't think I've ever noticed how incompetent a writer is before. It's written the same way Borat speaks, except it isn't a joke - they expect you to pay money for this.

I like thrillers and trashy action adventure novels. I like almost anything and I like steam-punk. It's a fun genre and setting it in New York should give it tons of atmosphere and feel but no. Nothing, nada zip. I don't think the author has ever been to New York folks and after reading this, neither will you. That is if you make it through sentences like this:

"another car sounded it's horn expressively to signal it's drivers annoyance"

If you like sentences like this, then this is the book for you. And this is from an action seen! Absolute dreck.

Steampowered cars. Check. Golems. Check. A dank Noir NYC. Check. Twisted people. Check. Strange gadgets. Check.

Ghosts of Manhattan is the first in a new series placed in the same world as Mann's Newbury & Hobbes only pushed into the future late 1920s. I enjoyed Mann's The Affinity Bridge, quite a bit, which is why I had to read Ghosts as soon as I nabbed a copy. With Ghosts of Manhattan Mann goes for the pulp comic feel of the early 20th century instead of a Shelockian pastiche he did so well. Mann's NYC is a version gorgeously accentuated set in a time period I love where Gangsters, big guns, and fast talking women rule. Mann succeeds fairly well especially with the action sequences, but there are some issues which boggled me quite a bit. Either way I did find myself enjoying the book even more than the Newbury series, which had to do a lot with the setting and dark nature of the characters.

Ghosts of Manhattan is like the dirty love child of H.P. Lovecraft and Bob Kane's Batman circa 1920s with flappers and prohibition in which The Ghost is after mob boss The Roman. Mann strings us along for a few chapters about the identity of the hero known as The Ghost, but I wish he had pushed it a bit further to really nail the separate personalities down a bit more. The mysterious Roman as an arch nemesis worked for the first half of the book along with his nefarious minions doing his bidding, but by the time he got directly involved he lost his ominous and dangerous presence even when finally taking center stage. The Ghost still manages quite a few hold-your-breath battles with clockwork Golems, loads of mobsters, and big gun fights that will more than keep you flipping the pages.

The Ghost himself is an also an intriguing character with his history and inventing capabilities, which have enabled him to create some interesting, if not buggy, gadgets along his way as a dark vigilante. Though there are some major problems with the narrative. Mann had the habit of holding out too much on the reader to the point when big plot points are revealed they didn't entirely fit in with what had been covered. For one the main love interest Celeste is left far too vague and when her history and connections are revealed it doesn't seem to make sense. A clue or two more would have helped. This also plays into the problems with not enough revealed about the main villain until the very end, which makes part of the plot feel too thin.

Overall, I recommend Ghosts of Manhattan with some reservations, but it will take hardly anytime to read as it zooms by with breakneck speeds at times and the stylization of the world and most characters is well done. If you're a steampunk fan looking for something a little bit different Ghosts of Manhattan is well worth checking out. Mann has done an admirable job of pushing the steam into the 20th century.

Ghosts of Manhattan is an adventurous pulp style story with shades of The Shadow, The Phantom Detective, and even a little of the noir side of Batman: The Animated Series. The world and story definitely lend themselves to a comic book audience, which may have been a better medium for it. The Cthulhu type universe intrigues me greatly, which I hope is further explored in future installments. I give Ghosts of Manhattan 7 out of 10 hats. I'll definitely be there for the sequel.

This was my first time reading anything by Mr. Mann. It was a fun read of a steampunk, film noir style superhero. Think of very early Batman with steampunk settings. The characters have their flaws and the back story was very interesting. The pace was very good. I really got behind the characters. The sequel "THE GHOST OF WAR" was equally fun. I am hoping that Mann continues the series.

The back cover of this novel trumpets this as the introduction of the world's first steampunk superhero. What it doesn't tell you is that there's virtually no steampunk and that the superhero is just another take on Batman. It's competently written in a sort of pulp/noir mash-up style, but I wouldn't recommend coming to this expecting anything new. If you've read a Batman comic or seen a Batman movie you'll predict just about every plot twist and turn by the end of the first act. Despite that, much of the novel is intentionally and frustratingly vague in an attempt to try and make the reader think that there's more going on than there seems, but ultimately it all falls away and the end result is revealed to be just as shallow as you suspect: an unexplored, lackluster climax and a rapid setup for a sequel. Further, the setting often comes off as half-baked and thin, and you get the feeling that if Mann had taken the time to explore it a little bit more it would have quickly fallen apart. I understand that this is set in the same world as Mann's earlier, longer, more traditionally steampunk novels...and maybe the world comes off better there, but in this iteration it's not really worth a lot.

Ultimately, "Ghosts of Manhattan" is shallow and so reliant upon gory kill descriptions and the trappings of the series that seems to have inspired it that it fails to do anything unexpected or new with it's (admittedly very promising) concept. If you're desperate for something in the genre to read, I guess it's worth a shot to see if you like it better than me...but you're probably better off waiting for the next Cherie Priest.

Want to read to get sleepy but don't want to get caught up in a stay awake all night page turner? Read this book! It's adequate especially if you don't look into the plot or characters too much. They're about as thin as cardboard.