Another abandoned book. The idea of ploughing through more of this turgid and characterless drivel is just too much.

Now, I should be the target audience for this; I love science fiction and superheroes, I love steampunk and deadbeat detectives - I even love smog and airships. But all that Christopher has done in Empire State is to loosely string these tropes and cliches together - there's no plot, and what there is is amateurishly assembled; the complexity of the world is inconsistently handled and little makes sense. The fact that there's an alternate universe only nineteen years old, filled with people and buildings and technology many years older, where NO ONE questions this anomaly, is ridiculous - and saying that the anomaly causes this acceptance is cheating.

Most of the 278 pages I have read consisted of characters relating the plot to each other; and these characters are 2D creations, and frequently infuriating - the sort of characters that COULD explain the questions the protagonist has, but don't. The protagonist is an idiot. If you read the blurb at the back, the author reveals all of the character names gleaned from Pixies songs - that's the sort of book this is; a clever assemblage of better work by better creators, little more than fan fiction.