∎ PDF Ghosts of Manhattan manngeorge 9781906727161 Books

Ghosts of Manhattan manngeorge 9781906727161 Books

Download As PDF : Ghosts of Manhattan manngeorge 9781906727161 Books

Ghosts of Manhattan manngeorge 9781906727161 Books

Ghosts of Manhattan tries to go for both a "Steampunk" and Chicago style gangland feel, but falls flat on both. The author's idea of "atmosphere" is to have all the characters smoking all the time. No, seriously. They light up so much in this book I looked for "Brought to you by Big Tobacco" on the credits. I know, one school of writing used to have it when you don't have anything active for the characters to do, have them light up. Not only is this idea now dated, it's so overdone in this book that if one cut out all the smoking and drinking, you'd have a short story.

The big secret of "The Ghosts" secret identity would be obvious to any reasonably bright 5th grader by the second chapter.

The steam tech is done all wrong too. We have steam powered cars- by shoveling actual coal (instead of a slurry). But if tech hasn't got to gasoline powered internal combustion engines- how do the biplanes fly? And about those bi-planes; in one scene two goons take off after our hero (who is a WWI pilot veteran) and manage to fly their rocket powered airplanes without a issue (who knew that all mooks could fly?!?) but manage to shoot down our heroes' biplane with `tommy guns"- apparently the author doesn't know anything about the early days of aerial combat. Mind you, our hero- ala Luke Skywalker, manages to make the bad guys crash their planes. Tossed in as filler is the obligatory mention of Telsa, of course.

The Ghost is sort of a cheap Batman clone, but with guns.

The police here are mostly inept, except for one Inspector- who then goes along on a couple of raids with "the Ghost" and brings no back up at all, when he has all of New York's Finest to call upon.

Then at the end, the author pulls some weird Cthulu supernatural stuff out of thin air. Huhwah?


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Ghosts of Manhattan manngeorge 9781906727161 Books Reviews

It has been more than a year since my father died and everyday something I see or hear reminds me of him. Ghosts of Manhattan brings back memories for me. My father talked about the books he read when he was young. He told me they were cheapy made and were full of action. Doc Savage, G-8, Bomba were some he mentioned. During the late 60's Doc Savage made a return when his adventures were reprinted with new covers and sold for 25 cents. My dad was over joyed and he bought them as fast as they came out and read them with the joy of his youth. I began to read them and they were just what Dad said they were, fun and action. The success of these caused the heros of the 30's to re-appear. The Spyder and the Shadow appeared. It is these that The Ghost resembles the most. George Mann has captured the 1930's feel. The hero is Batman like is his desire to protect the city. The villian is dark and mysterious. We have speak easys and blimps,and of course the drop dead beautiful torch singer. We have gadgets and golems gore. The hero is a scared war veteran who has a secret idenity. The action is over the top and in the style of serial cliff hangers that were shown before movies in the 30's. And of course the ending. The ending is right out of Batman, Spiderman, and DareDevil, on a building at night over looking the city... and a new adventure begins.

However there is one problem. The stories of the 30's had very little bad language, a damn or a hell but that is it. Mr. Mann uses the f@#k twice and for some reason it is very jarring to me. It is a small point but it does break the mood of the story.
I realize this is about three years late, but I just finished the book... just to clarify, I'm not that slow a reader. I read it in about four days, it just took me a while to get around to reading it. I thought it was fun. It was like a pulpy The Shadow, meets Lovecraft, meets The Great Gatsby, and was pretty much what I expected, and to be honest I didn't expect much. To criticize this book for what it lacks is like watching pro-wrestling and being disappointed because you were expecting Shakespeare. There was the dark hero, he fought bad guys, and stuff blew up, and all of it occurring in a jazz age world of rocket powered biplanes, zeppelins, and coal powered cars. The combination of which I found to be just magical. If none of the afore mentioned things appeals to you then by all means, don't read the book.
It's Batman in an alternate universe and a different time period. It has a Lovecraftian flair. What's not to like?

Well, the writing style is poor. Sometimes, it makes no sense.
The main character is one dimensional; we never truly understand why he's doing the vigilante thing.
And then there's the love interest with a past, who says near the climax, "haven't you figured it out yet?" when we've been given no clues what's going on at all, and given the stupid things he's said and done, it's really no wonder he hasn't either.

I wanted to like this one, but I almost put it down at several points thinking it couldn't get any worse.
Ghosts of Manhattan tries to go for both a "Steampunk" and Chicago style gangland feel, but falls flat on both. The author's idea of "atmosphere" is to have all the characters smoking all the time. No, seriously. They light up so much in this book I looked for "Brought to you by Big Tobacco" on the credits. I know, one school of writing used to have it when you don't have anything active for the characters to do, have them light up. Not only is this idea now dated, it's so overdone in this book that if one cut out all the smoking and drinking, you'd have a short story.

The big secret of "The Ghosts" secret identity would be obvious to any reasonably bright 5th grader by the second chapter.

The steam tech is done all wrong too. We have steam powered cars- by shoveling actual coal (instead of a slurry). But if tech hasn't got to gasoline powered internal combustion engines- how do the biplanes fly? And about those bi-planes; in one scene two goons take off after our hero (who is a WWI pilot veteran) and manage to fly their rocket powered airplanes without a issue (who knew that all mooks could fly?!?) but manage to shoot down our heroes' biplane with `tommy guns"- apparently the author doesn't know anything about the early days of aerial combat. Mind you, our hero- ala Luke Skywalker, manages to make the bad guys crash their planes. Tossed in as filler is the obligatory mention of Telsa, of course.

The Ghost is sort of a cheap Batman clone, but with guns.

The police here are mostly inept, except for one Inspector- who then goes along on a couple of raids with "the Ghost" and brings no back up at all, when he has all of New York's Finest to call upon.

Then at the end, the author pulls some weird Cthulu supernatural stuff out of thin air. Huhwah?