Disclaimer: An electronic copy of this book was provided in exchange for review by publishers PublishNation, via Library Thing.

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This odd little book is based on the premise that ghosts – particularly the ghosts of powerful or influential people – continue to have an existence beyond the corporeal. The three singled out in ‘Cleopatra’s Eternal Journal’ (the lady herself, Libyan strongman Muammar Gadaffi, and Silicon Valley giant Steve Jobs) are found tending to unfinished business, settling old scores, or simply continuing to enjoy their celebrity.

By far the most interesting is Cleopatra, whose journal begins as she almost gleefully plans her suicide and burial for maximum impact, and then proceeds to hang around for the next couple of millennia, observing and occasionally influencing world events. This Cleo is neither a tragic nor victimized figure. She is a sassy, acerbic broad with a finely developed sense of her own importance, who seems to be enjoying her afterlife much more than her earthly one. It’s a clever idea, and a delightful character, and it’s unfortunate that the author didn’t choose to focus exclusively on the Egyptian queen and develop the idea into full-length novel format.

Because things definitely go downhill from there. The second ghost features Muammar Gadaffi as a vindictive little egotist who visits a fictionalized Condoleeza Rice, playing on her alcoholism and avarice to right what he perceives as an old wrong. Probably the cleverest twist in this section is the use of a musical clue which the reader realizes, only much later, was far more than mere background filler.

The book ends with the ghost of Steve Jobs attempting to reconcile and reconnect with the biological father he never really knew in his lifetime. Again, this might have been developed further to emotionally impactful effect. One thinks of the singular ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ as the spiritual progenitor of such a work.

Alas, none of this happened, and the reader is left with an overall aftertaste of ‘why did I bother?’ The work is further damaged by the electronic presentation, which is rife with errors that apparently cropped up during the digitalization process. Page numbers appear randomly in blocks of text; in many sections, the first letter of the first word in a paragraph has been mysteriously plucked out of position and deposited somewhere down the line, like an inky hiccup, and the overall visual layout seems never to have been given an eyeball test before the book was released.

Then there’s the oddity of just who we should refer to as the author. The cover copy of the e-book edition lists Fred Schröer; the copyright page and all the promotional material refer to Victoria Schroeder. This book has enough problems of content; it certainly doesn’t need to lose additional points for sloppy presentation. It gets a two star rating, and then only because of the Cleopatra section. ( )

I love these 3 short stories; the narrative, the style; and mostly how Victoria describes a so accurate possibility of discovering THE CLEOPATRA'S TOMB. It's amusing reading. ( )

This was a win on Early Reviewers platform LT. While the first short story about Cleopatra is sometimes amusing the remaining tales just aren’t funny. Bad mouthing living people whether they are good or bad in print raises problems of integrity at the best of times, but here it merely seems puerile. Overall very disappointing. ( )