Review of Ghost of the White Nights – Book 3 of The Ghost trilogy by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

This is the third in the series and if you have missed reading the two previous books, Of Tangible Ghosts and The Ghost of the Revelator which Tor have conveniently put together in a single duology called, The Ghosts of Columbia – then I strongly recommend that you put this book on one side until you’ve read the previous offerings. If you are a fan of well constructed alternate histories and enjoy Modesitt’s intricate layering of daily detail, then this is a treat not to be missed.  Set in an alternative world in which ghosts are real, the United States never came into existence and Russia is still ruled by the Romanovs, this book continues the adventures of semi-retired spy, Dr. Johan Eschbach.

His lovely wife, Llysette du Boise, a refugee from the burning remains of France and a world-famous vocalist, has been invited to provide a command performance for the Russian Imperial household. Johan accompanies her, allowing him to work on the oil concession in Russian Alaska that Columbia so desperately needs and do some spying on the side. Johan’s espionage is carried out against the backdrop of the famous white nights of St. Petersburg, and nearly Arctic midsummer when the sun barely dips below the horizon and the sky seems to dissolve in ivory light. But even the oil shortage will fade to insignificance when Johan discovers what new weapons technology the Russians are developing, a threat even more fearsome than the atomic bombs of Austro-Hungary.

This is a fascinating premise, because when someone dies a violent death and registers what is happening to them, they leave behind a ghost. So suddenly all the great battles that litters our history mostly don’t occur, including WW’s I and II – because having thousands of disturbed ghosts will make large areas uninhabitable. Unfortunately, it doesn’t completely prevent tyrants and Ferdinand of the Austrian Empire is a case in point. The Founding Fathers never made it to America, which is split up into a series of smaller states and Columbia, where Johan and Llysette live, was colonised by the Dutch. Modesitt’s world building is a delight and – unlike most series – I personally think the middle book is the strongest.

This Russian adventure is an enjoyable, engrossing read. I loved meeting up again with Johan, who is an interesting protagonist as a university professor. However, this time around I do have a couple of niggles. Modesitt carefully builds the tension by giving us all the small details of Johan’s life, which works very well. But when there is a sudden explosion of violence, I find it difficult to equate Johan’s completely casual approach to killing several people in quick succession to the man who quivers when his wife raises an eyebrow and snaps. It also disturbs me that, given we have a ringside seat into Johan’s first person point of view – he only once alludes to his dead wife and child, wincing when someone else brings them up. He is depicted as a thoughtful, sensitive person, desperate to keep Llysette safe and I find his absence of any remembrance of his former family at odds with the rest of his character.

These quibbles aside – and yes, I have marked the book down accordingly – I still found this book a really enjoyable read and if you haven’t yet gotten around to catching up with this excellent series, I would urge you to do so.
8/10

Review of Imager – Book 1 of The Imager Portfolio by L.E. Modesitt, Jr

When I came across this relatively new fantasy series by Modesitt, I decided to hunt down the first book.  After all, anything written by this experienced and prolific author is always worth checking out – and this one is certainly worth the effort.

Although Rhennthyl is the son of a leading wool merchant in L’Excelsis, the capital of Solidar and the most powerful nation on Terahnar, he has spent years becoming a journeyman artist. He is skilled and diligent enough to be considered for the status of master artisan – in another two years. In a single moment, Rhenn’s entire life is transformed when his master patron is killed in a flash fire and Rhenn discovers he is an imager – one of the few in the entire world of Terahnar who possess the power to visualize things and make them real.

Now he must leave his family and join the Collegium of Imagisle, where because of their powers (including the ability to do accidental magic even while asleep) and because they are both feared and vulnerable, imagers live separately from the rest of society. In this new life, Rhenn discovers that all too many of the ‘truths’ he knew were nothing of the sort and that every day brings a new threat to his life. He makes a powerful enemy while righting a wrong and begins to learn to live a life doing magic in secret.

This is an intriguing, layered world that closely resembles the Renaissance period in its technology and cut-throat attitude to other states and religions. Politically, Solidar is powerful but isolated by its religious belief that Naming a deity is well on the way to blasphemy – but the dealbreaker is Solidar’s tolerance of imagers. As Rhenn learns more during his highly specialised training, he discovers that Solidar’s supremacy comes at a very high price…

I’ve read grumbles about the relatively slow pacing of the storyline – however I didn’t find this a problem.  Modesitt’s strength is establishing textured, believable worlds where his characters can discuss and critique their experiences of different forms of governance. This is grown up fantasy – where notions of tolerance versus enlightened dictatorship, colliding religious views, and the consequences of power and its abuse can all be examined.

However this book isn’t a philosophical musing on politics and religion – it’s a fantasy adventure about a powerful magic-user who is coming to terms with what he is capable of doing. And once more, Modesitt gives us a demonstration of how to construct a magical system. Imagers don’t live in the city of L’Excelsis – it’s too dangerous. They cannot even have a normal married life, because when they fall asleep, they cannot control their dreams… I love the world. I love the way that Modesitt builds the layers and complexity throughout the book without compromising the pace and narrative tension.

Any niggles? Well, we access the whole book in Rhenn’s first person viewpoint, and while he is a well defined character, I would have preferred to have seen a bit more angst when he finally walks away from the ashes of his career as an artist. His initial time at the Collegium seemed a bit too smooth. I also feel that he deals with some of the events with great coolness and resourcefulness – and I’d like to see him flounder, showing more vulnerability and horror at the situations with which he is having to cope. Having said that, set against the overall quality of this first book in the series, it isn’t a major flaw – and I’m sure Modesitt has plenty of nasty experiences in store for Rhenn in future. One thing I do know – I’ll be hunting down the second book in the series to find out exactly what happened, next. If you enjoy intelligent, well written high fantasy with interesting things to say about the human condition in amongst all the mayhem and magic, then I’d advise you to look out a copy of Imager – you’re in for a treat.
9/10

Review of Ghosts of Columbia omnibus edition by L.E. Modesitt, Jr

There’s a problem, I think, with extremely prolific writers. The obvious one is that someone regularly releasing two novels a year will – inevitably – at times have something published that would have been far better if only it had a chance to ‘incubate’ a bit longer, either in the author’s imagination or in the editing state. But another issue is that an author with fifty-something novels to his name will occasionally produce a book, or series that is absolutely outstanding – which somehow gets overlooked. Fortunately, someone at Tor had the good sense to realise that this had happened to Modesitt’s Ghost books and so Of Tangible Ghosts and The Ghost of the Revelator were republished together in an omnibus edition.

I’m very glad they were – and that I stumbled across the book on the library shelves. This is a world where people who are killed violently or accidentally with sufficient time to realise that they are about to die, become ghosts. So large battles become undesirable – battlefields overrun with hordes of ghosts make an area uninhabitable until they fade. The point at which history has also diverged is when the colonists from the Mayflower landing in the New World succumb to the plague, denying England any foothold on the American continent. Which means a chunk of Canada and North America is settled by the Dutch, in a nation called Columbia with New France down in the south and the Mormon state of Deseret jostling in an uneasy truce. For the time being…

Drop into this interestingly original world, ex-espionage agent and political minister Johan Eschbach, now living quietly in New Bruges and working as a lecturer on Environmental Studies at the Vanderaak Centre who tells his story in first person POV. And we are sucked into a world where everything is in its place; where people all know each other in a small university town and Johan, recovering from the death of his wife and small son, gives us daily details of the food he eats, the lessons he teaches and his interactions with the Dean, his colleagues and cleaning lady – and the ups and downs of his relationship with the French opera singer and refugee, Llysette duBoise. Against this backdrop political tensions rise, murders occur and Johan is inexorably pulled into the deadly intrigue going on around the new research into ghosts.

It is masterfully done. Johan is a wonderful character, whose depth and complexity powers the whole narrative. Modesitt even pulls off the very difficult trick of giving the reader information about Johan through what he won’t discuss – his first wife and dead son… This is Modesitt at his blinding best – and that best is very good, indeed. Because the other major component that needs to really work in an alternate history, is the world.

In this particular plot Modesitt not only had to have the basis tenant nailed, he also needed to ensure all the details are convincing – this isn’t some paranormal fantasy where we can shrug our shoulders and assume that the odd flaky anomaly is ok – it’s a big ask. But Modesitt rises to the challenge magnificently and as far as I’m concerned, this is the best alternate history I’ve ever read. The world is there in a welter of detail that in its everyday ordinariness acts as a striking contrast to ghosts and the increasingly dangerous situation besetting Johan, thus adding to, rather than diluting the narrative tension.

Any niggles? Well, there’s one – which would have been a major problem if this review had been about Of Tangible Ghosts, rather than the omnibus. Modesitt slightly messes up the climactic denouement at the end of the first novel, so that I wasn’t completely sure exactly what had occurred – until I’d finished the first chapter of the second book where it is all properly explained. As I’ve been reading the second book, I’ve been slightly dreading the end – what if he does the same thing? It’s one of the major sins in my view – taking your reader all the way, only to rush the final details, leaving an unsatisfactory muddle. I’m delighted to report that Modesitt brings the plot to a complete and well explained conclusion in the second and final book in the omnibus. So despite that one glitch, I’m giving this book a 10.

If you enjoy well depicted, convincing worlds where the main character leaps off the page, complete with believable foibles – this is a must-read book that has been somehow buried under the weight of the rest of Modesitt’s output. A real shame… because it’s right up there as one of my most enjoyable reads, ever – and the skill required to produce such a gem shows that at his best, Modesitt is one of the outstanding speculative fiction writers of his generation.
10/10

Review of Haze by L.E. Modesitt, Jr

Modesitt is a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy, probably most well known for his famous series The Saga of Recluce. Haze is a stand-alone science fiction novel told in third person viewpoint, featuring Keir Roget.

What lies beneath the millions of orbiting nanotech satellites that shroud the world called Haze? Major Keir Roget’s mission is to make planetfall in secret, find out, and report back to his superiors in the Federation, the Chinese-dominated government that rules Earth and the colonized planets.  For all his effectiveness as a security agent, Roget is troubled by memories of an earlier assignment in his career. When he was assigned to covert duty in the Noram backcountry town of St. George, he not only discovered that the long-standing Saint culture was neither as backward nor as harmless as his superiors believed, but he barely emerged with his life and sanity intact.

Now, scouting Haze, he finds a culture both seemingly familiar and frighteningly alien, with hints of a technology far superior to that of the Federation. Yet he is not quite certain how much of what he sees is real or how to alert his superiors to a danger he cannot prove – if he can escape Haze…

The scenario at the heart of this novel is an intriguing one, dealing with a collision of two completely different cultures with poor old Agent Roget stuck between them. I really like the premise. The world is interestingly portrayed through Roget’s viewpoint as his experiences on Haze run alongside his previous encounter with a society unsympathetic to the Federation’s aims and ideals.
If you are looking for an action-packed, shoot-em-up, however, then this isn’t your book. It attempts to deliver a far more thoughtful-provoking read. But… while Modesitt’s depiction of his cultures is sophisticated and detailed… while his take on the near future is disturbing and fascinating in equal measure… this book did not grip me as it should have, given that this is my very favourite sub-genre.

I think the problem lies with Modesitt’s protagonist, Keir Roget, who isn’t a character I found easy to care about or know. The initial pace of the book is leisurely, as Modesitt slowly builds up the details of his world through Roget’s viewpoint – which isn’t a problem if the reader has sufficient access to Roget’s thoughts and feelings to discover what really makes him tick. However, despite the fact that Haze is fairly short, the first half was something of a trudge, rather than a delightful page-turner as I waded through the slow build-up to the initial sudden burst of action. Roget is still recovering from major trauma – which we don’t learn about until two-thirds through the book. It may well be that Modesitt has him so locked down and distant as a consequence of this, but the result is that we only really see the world through the eyes of this single character means that if we don’t bond with him, then the book is seriously compromised.

Modesitt is a skilful writer with a wealth of experience and his depiction of this interesting, nuanced world means that reading Haze is worth the effort. However, it’s not a great book – and I can’t shake the feeling that if only Modesitt had poured a bit more energy and internal dialogue into Roget’s character – the dynamic tension in this plotline would have set it on course to be one of the outstanding reads of the decade.
7/10