Subject: _Of Tangible Ghosts_ by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

From: [email-masked] (Christina Schulman)
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 1994 01:06:35 GMT

_Of Tangible Ghosts_ by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

_Of Tangible Ghosts_ is a difficult book to pigeonhole.  It's a murder
mystery and an espionage thriller, set in an alternate history, with
environmental overtones.  The book doesn't quite succeed on all these
counts, but the alternate history is deep and interesting enough to
make the book worthwhile.

Modesitt posits a world in which ghosts are a real electromagnetic
phenomenon, created when humans die in great stress, fading over time.
Conquest is a slow process because the ghosts created by war render
territory uninhabitable until they fade.  This has resulted in a
noticeably different balance of power in October 1993, and a relatively
weak Columbia--recognizable as the US, although the Dutch culture
lingers in the Northeast--is racing against the powerful Austro-
Hungarian empire to develop ghost-removal technology.

Doktor Johan Eschbach is a retired spy and minister, now teaching
environmental economics at a small college in New Bruges.  (A bit of
sleuthing with an atlas suggests that New Bruges encompasses New
Hampshire.)  The murder of a member of the music faculty embroils
Eschbach in a power struggle between several foreign governments as
well as different factions in his own government.
 
The murder mystery is relegated to an afterthought, and Eschbach's
solution to the espionage tangle is rather appalling and not entirely
credible.  But the plot moves swiftly, and the depth of the alternate
culture causes Columbia to seem truly foreign even while it remains
recognizable.  Modesitt is rather occasionally rather blatant about
pointing out the differences in his history; his characters have a
tendency to recapitulate a few centuries of history whenever they
discuss current events.  But the little cultural asides that he works
into conversations and his descriptions of Eschbach's daily minutiae
lend depth and detail to his world.

_Of Tangible Ghosts_ bears little resemblance to Modesitt's Recluce
fantasies (no onomatopeia!) or his science fiction (no widespread
violence and destruction); it's a more thoughtful book, and his prose
is somehow cleaner.  I enjoyed it, and I think it'll appeal to Modesitt
fans who don't mind a calmer style.

         "What about a sense of wonder?  Take ghosts," I offered.
     "We see a ghost, and whether we like it or not, it exists.  You
     can't touch it, exactly, and you can't tell exactly when it will
     appear.  Doesn't it make you wonder?"  I shrugged.  "But you
     talk about...what if there were a world where there were no
     ghosts?  How would that change things?  I asked that in a class.
     No one knew.  They hadn't even thought about it."
         "That's it.  They don't even think about it.  How could you
     envision a _Hamlet_ without the impetus of his father's ghost?"

%A   Modesitt, L. E. Jr.
%T   Of Tangible Ghosts
%I   Tor
%C   New York
%D   October 1994
%G   ISBN 0-312-85720-9
%P   381pp
%O   hardback, US $22.95

-- 
Christina Schulman    Presbyterian University Hospital   [email-masked]