Customer Reviews

Of Tangible Ghosts

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Of Tangible Ghosts is the first novel in the Ghost series. In an alternate universe, the English Plymouth colony failed and the Dutch dominated Columbia. Austro-Hungary has conquered most of Europe and the French exiles under DeGaulle rule in Mexico. In this timeline, ghosts are much more visible, powerful, and responsive to technical devices.

Doktor Johan Eschbach is a former Subminister for Environment in the Natural Resources Ministry of the Columbian government. Prior to his term as a high level government official, Johan had been a flying officer in the Republic Air Corps and then an agent in the Spazi, the Sedition Prevention and Security Service. When Speaker Hartpence's Reformed Tories party won the election, they cleaned house in the Natural Resources Ministry and Johan retired to his family's old summer home in Vanderbraak Centre, accepting a position in the Natural Resources Department of the local college, Vanderbraak State University.

In this novel, Johan has a close relationship to Doktor Llysette duBoise, a concert quality soprano who also teaches at the college and who is a refugee from the conquest of France. Llysette has a concert one evening and Johan drives her to the music center to prepare for the performance, then goes to his office. Later, as he locks up to leave for the concert, Johan feels a drop in temperature. Then he hears someone sobbing and shortly thereafter he sees the ghost of Miranda Miller, a piano instructor in the Music department. Apparent Miranda has just been murdered. He starts to report the incident to Campus Security, but realizes that such a report would position him as a prime suspect. Instead, he walks to the Music department to attend Llysette's concert.

During the next few days, Johan discovers that the Spazi are interested in Miranda's murder, indicating that the homicide has more that local interest. Moreover, he starts to receive newspaper clippings from an anonymous source, which he knows must be associated with the Spazi. It would seem that he is being maneuvered into investigating the case.

This novel presents some interesting notions about the creation and persistence of ghosts and the technical manipulation of such spirits. Moreover, it speculates about the relationship of the mind to the brain and the consequences of separating them.

As is usual with Modesitt, the plot moves rather slowly as the reader views and reviews the life of the protagonist and the characteristics of his society. If the reader can tolerate the slow pace, however, the story will unfold before your eyes as if you were living it. Maybe Modesitt is an acquired taste, but so is Faulkner, and I find there is much that is common between the two. Faulkner, however, never had to create a whole timeline.

Highly recommended for Modesitt fans and anyone else who enjoys tales filled with philosophical notions, technical speculations and international intrigue.

-Arthur W. Jordin

I've always been a complete fan of Modesitt's SciFi works, so I decided to pick up this book. Boy, was I ever pleased. Not only does the author manage to weave a completely believable alternate history in which the North American political landscape is totally differnt (though historiclaly plausible) from today, but he manages to insert the idea of ghosts into the stiory - in a highly believable manner.

Within this complex reality Modesitt tells a great tale of political intrigue. The hero is great...an academic who is a reluctant spy who really only wants to leave his past behind and teach in his small regional university.

The bottom line is "Of Tangible Ghosts" is a superb book!

Something to read when you have nothing else to do. Interesting, if a little confusing in the begining. I liked it. I picked up the sequal at the library, really not knowing what it was about. I started it, and I kind of liked it, but I had no idea what a lot of the things being refered to were.While in a book store, I saw of Tangible Ghosts and decided that it might help me understand what was happening. This one is good, but if you are looking for a really spy-y novel, read this one so you will understand The Ghost of the Revelater

[paired review with Ghost of the Revelator]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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" [note 1].
--------
"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.

Both books are reasonably self-contained, but if you read one and
like it, you'll want to read the other, so it makes sense to start with #1.

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 (sorceress?, who
teaches at Southern Utah University). 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...
_____________
Note 1) -- not to mention *confusing*. A reader at
Amazon.com writes: "I've read the book 6 or 7 times,
and I'm *still* not sure what's happened at the end..."

Review copyright 1998 by Peter D. Tillman
http://www.sfsite.com/12a/gost46.htm

The books is slow paced, with flavors of Robert B. Parker's Spenser and John Le Carre's Smiley books. Everything in this alternate world seems to move a little more deliberately, and its inhabitants don't really know any more than the reader does. This lack of awareness is a little off-putting, but once the characters are firmly established, the story itself is excellent.

Quite a change of pace from Modessit's other works. My advantage was that I came to this book having read the sequel first. The sequel is more of an adventure story in the Doyle/Buchan mode, and quite enjoyable. This book is altogether darker and moodier. Worth the effort.

This book is set in an alternate present. Ghosts are real, the computers are like something out of the movie "Brazil", and politically, well, all the major powers are portrayed as a bunch of nazis. The final, climactic scene is downright confusing... I've read the book 6 or 7 times, and I'm still not sure what's happened at the end.

But...

I *really* like the cultural background in this book. The politics, the economics, the architectural details, the *cooking* -- they all have a hyper-real garishness to them that I find very appealing. It's similar to the author's cultural development in his novel "The Parafaith War": bold, colorful literary brushwork, although probably offensive to some. The description of the trucker's meal reminds me *so* much of a, ah, dining experience I once had in North Carolina... I love it, and I've enjoyed reading this book those 6 or 7 times largely because of the details of alternate-reality development in it.

A sequel's been announced. I look forward to it.

Of Tangible Ghosts (Ghost Trilogy)
The, three so far,"Ghost" books by L. E. Modesitt Jr. were an early introduction to the "Steam" genre. They present a well thought out alternate world, one in which the population must deal with and live with the repercussions of deaths by violence and war. Ghosts are real and persistent, reliving their deaths, making it difficult for those that are alive to ignore them. Some are seen by the political community as merely a nuisance, like the Buddhist protestors, that daily engage in self immolation, keeping their faiths burning passions indelibly etched in the minds of those that see it. Some are lonely and neglected and fade away.
Battles, especially those on land, tend to create many more inconvenient ghosts. After all, who would want to live in a house or town or anywhere that was infested by one or more ghosts whose very essence permeates the fabric of reality, sending waves of pain and suffering. It could really upset the daily routines.
Now imagine whole blocks, cities, countries devastated by War and its Weapons of MASS Destruction. Such technologies as our Nuclear bombs would be unthinkable. Not only could the victor not occupy the area due to Nuclear Radiation, no one could stay in their right minds and fast the Ghostly Radiation. Ghosts are not mere superstition but have a literal physical reality. In a world where your crimes can haunt you, and the ghosts of your crimes are visible to others.

The main character is Dr. Johan Eschbach, a one time spy in the employ of the Dutch run Columbia, now a small northeastern provincial professor tries to teach his students to see beyond the veil of the printed facts, to think and respond, to look for the reasons and the consequences of actions, not to merely read and regurgitate.

There is much to admire and like about this world. Much as Eschbach encourages his students, I too encourage you to go beyond the veil of this review and view his world with your own eyes.

I really enjoyed this book. The premise (ghosts staying around) and the consequences of that were very interesting. The action was understated, almost matter of fact, which I liked.

Weird pricing on the Kindle edition - normally a publisher will set the first book in a set lower to get people to try out the series then keep the others higher/normal. They appear to have done the opposite here (10 for 1st book and 7 for 2nd/3rd books as I am writing this) for some reason. Of course you can get both the first and second books combined in Ghosts of Columbia for the same price as just the first one too, so who knows what they are thinking.

Just a technical note about the kindle version.

It has a nice readable bold font. It is different from the normal kindle text.

However, one artifact of the new font is that small blemishes and ink spots are also rendered.

In a steampunk-esque alternate history where ghosts are a fact of everyday life and the Dutch rather than the British took control of the American colonies, Johan Eschbach is drawn away from his position as college professor in a sleepy little town when a colleague is mysteriously murdered, setting off a series of events that has Eschbach using all his skills from his former job as a governmental intelligence agent to avoid the many, many people who suddenly think he'd be a lot more useful dead.

That summary makes the book sound straightforward, but honestly, it took until about halfway through the book until I pieced the basic premise together. The narrative just dumps you down into the middle of the universe and doesn't bother to explain the basics; the ghost part is fairly obvious, but it took me entirely too long to get any sort of coherent picture of the political and cultural structure of the world. Given that this is something of a political espionage thriller, that's a bit of a problem. The pacing and narration are also a problem for a thriller; Eschbach spends vast portions of the book going on about grading papers, going on dates with his lover, and describing nearly every meal he eats. Modesitt is also entirely too enamoured of Eschbach; nearly everyone the man encounters tells him that he is a beacon of honesty in a corrupt world and how sorry they are about his Tragic Past. He also makes Eschbach far too smart; the character is always two steps ahead of the reader (in actual knowledge of the world and its history, not in subjective areas like deduction), so he does things that appear to have no logical basis until he deigns to let the reader in on his reasoning.

For all that, though, I actually rather enjoyed the book. The universe Modesitt has created may be confusing, but it's quite involved and impressive; it's fascinating to see all the differences that have sprung simply from adding ghosts to the equation. The "cozy" atmosphere is strange at first, given the subject matter, but honestly, I'm not a fan of thrillers, so after a while I grew to like the laid-back feel. I doubt I'd recommend this to anyone, but I think I'll pick up the second book in the trilogy for myself.