The story revolves around -- and is told from the perspectives of -- three lovingly re-imaged characters. El Sombra, is a merciless, Zorro-esque Mexican swordsman, from Ewing's earlier work of the same name. Once upon a time he was a poet named Djego. Now, he is the Saint of Ghosts, El Sombra, who believes the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. Moving along a seemingly parallel path is the Blood Spider, who begins the book as a murderous masked vigilante, something like a cross between Batman and the Shadow. Then there's America's Greatest Hero, Doc Thunder, who is presented as an amalgam of Doc Savage, Hulk Hogan, and the original template for Superman. Thunder is invulnerable to bullets, able to twist solid steel with his bare hands, and can leap over tall buildings, etc. If all of this sounds like stuff you've read too often, fear not, what makes this work stand out is not the building blocks, but rather the way they are arranged. The differences between the Pax Britannia universe and our own are many and varied, the most significant being that steam power rules, and the electrical world we inhabit is just a dream. Quite literally in the case of alternate Andy Warhol, whose sculpture of a cellphone is exhibited Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art; a block of black ceramic studded with numbers and a tiny sheet of glass… representing the world of dreampunk. Distinctly less amusing is the fact that in this world, Hitler is still alive, after a fashion, and the Ultimate Reich has its tentacles inside the United Socialist States of America, attempting to run asymmetric terrorist activities via a covert group called Untergang. The thread that binds all together is the murder of Heinrich Donner, the former head of Untergang, who finally gets his comeuppance. It's a crime which attracts the attention of Doc Thunder and crew. Was it El Sombra or the Blood Spider? As we move toward finding out why Doc Thunder is so interested in a dead Nazi, we also learn that he is part of a ménage à trois with the mutant detective Monk, literally an apeman, and the immortal Maya Zor-Tura, former Queen of the Leopard men. The latter being a sideways look at Ayesha, from H. Rider Haggard's classic novel, She. Then there's the sheer cheek of the Blood Spider's civilian identity being a playboy named Parker, and the self-styled most dangerous man in the world turning out to be the folically challenged Lars Lomax. The creative appropriation and relentless inventiveness never flags.

From the opening pages which present a series of wonderfully well written, scene setting short stories, to the overall theme which surprises and delights, this is a book where ingenuity meshes with smart pulp fiction. The Pax Britannia universe, familiar and yet so very different, shows us the way it could have been, and that is a rather enticing vision. I finished the book eager for more, and I have no hesitation in recommending Gods of Manhattan as a real winner.