Customer Reviews

Ghosts of Columbia (Ghost Trilogy)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've read most of his books and I enjoy his style of writing. It's an education in itself about government and life. The stories are fast moving do not stagnate.

I though we had another in Modesitt's Ghost series, but it's just a re-release of the first and second volumes in one. If you're not familiar with the series, it's wonderful, quite different from his other series, and well worth reading. This would be a pretty good place to start. If you are familiar with the series, you probably already have this.

This is a very odd read. I enjoyed it, but it reads a little slow, and jumps around a bit. Goes on the premise that ghosts are not just myth and instead of only a few that can see them, all can see them. Wars were all shorter or never took place as screaming ghosts are harder to hide than dead bodies. Country now in some type of Gestapo type of state, oil is a dear commodity, and most people use steamers instead of cars.

Johan Eschbach, retired from an eventful career in service to
Columbia as a naval aviator, Spazi agent, and cabinet minister,
now teaches environmental economics at Vanderbraak State
University in New Bruges (New Hampshire in OTL). Doktor
Eschbach lost both his wife and daughter in a political murder --
he himself was badly wounded -- and he would like nothing better
than a quiet life in this academic backwater. But that would make
for a dull book, and he is soon caught up in a murder
investigation, love affair, political intrigues, and secret military
research into "deghosting".

Doktor Eschbach's solution to the ensuing tangle is
"rather appalling and not entirely credible", per reviewer
Christina Schulman, whose review is worth googling for.
--------
"A land of dirigibles and difference engines, Modesitt's
eerily refined world is compelling and coolly original, a place where
you still drive to work in a car--albeit steam-powered--but think
nothing of waving good morning to the zombies raking leaves off the
lawn." -- Paul Hughes, Amazon.com

Ghost of the Revelator picks up Doktor Eschbach and his new
wife Llysette Du Boise as her singing career is taking off, and
as the messy ending to "Tangible" comes back to haunt Eschbach.
The story unfolds slowly, but the same wonderful details of
everyday life that enlivened the first book -- lunch at a favorite
cafe, icy roads, dense, lazy, occasionally sharp students, petty
academic politics, politicians who can "smile and smile and be a
villain" -- make the trip worthwhile. This world is slower-paced
than ours, and Modesitt's prose has something of the heavy Dutch
feel of well-fed burghers, shining-clean windows, tidy lives. Very
human. If slow bothers you -- skim.

Modesitt still hasn't smoothed out his jarring exposition
of the differences between his alternate world and ours, here
usually dumped as interior monologues. Show, don't tell, please!

Llysette sings at a Presidential Arts Awards dinner and is
invited to perform at the prestigious Salt Palace in Deseret --
after fleeing the fall of France and an Austrian political prison.
Johan comes to the uncomfortable conclusion that he's about to be
eclipsed in fame and fortune by his glamorous wife....

....but maybe Deseret is after more than just a performance by the
new prima diva. And what about Austria-Hungary? And New
France? And the shadowy "Revealed Twelve"?

Minister Eschbach resolves the ensuing international crisis with
verve, skill, and a couple of twists that would be unfair to reveal.
Suffice it to say that the ending is most satisfactory, and leaves
plenty of room for future Eschbach/Du Boise adventures. (There is
now a third book, Ghosts of the White Nights, also recommended.)

Doktor Eschbach and the "Ghosts" books have parallels to Mr
Modesitt's real life: the author was a naval aviator, spent twenty
years in our "Federal District" as a political aide, EPA staffer, and
college teacher. He's married to a lyric soprano. He and his family moved
from DC to New Hampshire ("New Bruges") and then to Utah:
these are the settings for the "Ghosts" books. "Write what you
know," the old adage goes -- it certainly works for Modesitt. I
presume the spies and ghosts are from the author's imagination.

Review copyright 1998 by Peter D. Tillman
First published at SF Site