Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann

 Someone, somewhere along the line had to have told me something like, "If you like Steampunk, you need to check out George Mann", but I can't for the life of me recall who would have done so. This is one of those books that's just a twist or two away from my usual genre choices; it's steampunk, but also has the flavor of something from Marvel Comics, with a slight accent of film noire sensibilities.

The setting is 1930s New York, complete with bootleg gin, steam-driven automobiles, and biplanes with jetpacks, plus a bunch of nasty gangsters, frails and molls. There's a "superhero" of sorts named The Ghost, and some really evil villains, but somewhere about a third of the way into the book, I simply ceased to care what happened, or to whom.

Life is too short to read books that don't grab ya.

If you're a Marvel or DC fan, maybe this would appeal to you more than it did to me.