Rating: 
Summary: Simple pleasures
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Simple pleasures
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Clever Idea, Poor execution
Review: This book is based on a clever melding of genres; alternative history, fantasy, and suspense thriller. The alternate history dimension is the setting in an alternate world where North America is split among Quebec, New France (Mexico in our timeline) and Dutch-founded equivalent of the USA, and Europe is dominated by a ruthless Austro-Hungarian Empire. The fantasy dimension is that ghosts exist, a reality something like the Eqyptian Ka, and can be manipulated by electromagnetic fields. The existence of ghosts is responsible largely for the historical divergences between this history and ours. The suspense thriller aspect is the plot. Unfortunately, while the basic idea is clever, this book is disappointing reading. The plot is rather mechanical, the characterization is thin, and the writing pedestrian.
Rating:
Summary: Clever Idea, Poor execution
Review: This book is based on a clever melding of genres; alternative history, fantasy, and suspense thriller. The alternate history dimension is the setting in an alternate world where North America is split among Quebec, New France (Mexico in our timeline) and Dutch-founded equivalent of the USA, and Europe is dominated by a ruthless Austro-Hungarian Empire. The fantasy dimension is that ghosts exist, a reality something like the Eqyptian Ka, and can be manipulated by electromagnetic fields. The existence of ghosts is responsible largely for the historical divergences between this history and ours. The suspense thriller aspect is the plot. Unfortunately, while the basic idea is clever, this book is disappointing reading. The plot is rather mechanical, the characterization is thin, and the writing pedestrian.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful but Confusing
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful but Confusing
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Great idea, poorly executed.
Review: This novel has a great idea at its heart--ghosts are always among us--but this book suffers from a lot of political meandering, poorly written text, and takes too long to get to the heart of the story. Overall the book is boring and hard to read without falling asleep.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-done, complex, worthwhile alt-hist political thriller
Review: [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..."
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