Great alternate history world with a fascinating take on ghosts being the reason weapons of mass destruction didn't take over on this world. ( )

I think this would be classified as 'steampunk'. There's a slight difference in how electricity works, so ghosts are a fact of life. The U.S. isn't a country, instead there are several smaller countries across the NA continent. No gas cars, but steamers & there are 'difference engines' instead of computers. It's an interesting concept & world that he's created. It's mostly a mystery story with a dash of ghostly horror occasionally sprinkled through the series. ( )

Is there such a genre as "cozy thriller"?

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 he 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. ( )

Of Tangible Ghosts is a mystery/thriller set in an alternative universe where ghosts linger. One of the side effects of this is that war is more difficult, since battles tend to make large numbers of ghosts. This has led to nations and alliances that are eerily familiar, but different from our own in interesting ways. The book centers on the murder of a college professor in a backwater town that leads to lots of trouble for a former spy who is now a professor at the college.

The mystery of who committed the murder was good - I didn't figure it out until the very end. The spy story wasn't so interesting for me until the very end. Modesitt kept using language to try to create a sense of danger to the main character that just didn't work for me. Once the final 10 chapters got going, the pace really picked up and things fell into place. It kept me interested until the end, but not on the edge of my seat.

All in all, I'd recommend it to fantasy and thriller fans. but with less enthusiasm than I might have for other books. ( )

http://www.leftfield.org/~rawdon/books/sf/modesitt_le/#of.tangible.ghosts ( )