Category Archives: George Mann

The Immorality Engine by George Mann

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While I got tired of Mann’s Ghost series with a steampunk superhero, his Newbury and Hobbes series of steampunk detectives is still going strong with the latest episode The Immorality Engine. The title is a play on words with an engine being used immoral purposes that could also be used for immortality. And we get some nice development in the relationships between Newbury, Hobbes and Bainbridge. So let’s see what happens in this latest book.

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Ghosts of War by George Mann

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When I read the first book in this series, Ghosts of Manhattan (my review), the steampunk genre was starting to get more popular and there weren’t many superhero steampunk novels out there. So, at the time, it felt fresh and interesting. But by the time the sequel, Ghosts of War, came out, it was just another book like several other steampunkish superheroes and the limitations in the story and Mann’s writing have become more apparent. The story is short, but it probably should have been longer. There were too many story holes and rough transitions in the book. So, let’s see what the Ghost is up to.

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The Osiris Ritual by George Mann

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Our favorite steampunk detectives are back in George Mann’s The Osiris Ritual. First introduced in The Affinity Bridge, Sir Maurice Newbury and his assistant Veronica Hobbes are back in the late Victorian age, where Victoria survives due to a steampunk version of an iron lung. The book does a good job building on the excitement for Egyptian artifacts (set only a couple decades before the King Tut discovery excites the world) which makes it feel like it fits into history well. So, let’s see what Newbury and Hobbes are up to.

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The Affinity Bridge by George Mann

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The Affinity Bridge is another steampunk novel by George Mann. It was actually written before Ghosts of Manhattan (review) and there is a sequel, The Osiris Ritual (review), which just came out in the US (Four books in the series have been published in the UK). Mann is setting himself up as the master of the steampunk universe. So, how is the book?

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Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann

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Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann is part Batman and part Sky Captain. The book is a steampunk pulp superhero that is an homage to The Shadow, only our hero is The Ghost. The US is in a cold war with Britain (whose Queen Victoria just died at the ripe of age of 107) and is deep into prohibition and jazz. The only thing missing from the book was appearances from Babe Ruth and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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