Miriam Beckstein is a young, hip business journalist in Boston. But her very well-connected family comes from an alternate reality, where they are a little too much like the mafia for comfort. Having escaped to yet anther world, Miriam remains in hiding from both her Clan and their opponents. With a nasty shooting war going on in Gruinmarkt, the world of the Clan, Miriam is shielded from danger, but also from information. And there’s a secret yet for Miriam to discover; something that she's really going to hate--if she lives long enough to find out.
“For sheer inventiveness and energy, this cliffhanger-riddled serial remains difficult to top.” --*Publishers Weekly
“The world-building in this series is simply superb, in other words—it is engaging, crystal-clear and disturbingly real….. The Merchants' War* is fast-paced and engrossing and will leave readers ravenous for the next installment.” --SciFi.com
"Charlie Stross' latest is a brilliant, amusing, and challenging piece of mestizo fiction -- recklessly cross-breeding fantasy and SF tropes, and using the resulting bonfire to say interesting things about culture, economics, politics, and really cool battles with chain-mail and MP5's and horses and hang-gliders. Very real people with very different backgrounds meet and collide and strike lovely sparks. This series is great and getting better all the time!" --S.M. Stirling
“The action shifts rapidly among the three worlds in the fourth successive thriller in a fantastically thrilling series.” --Booklist
Description:
Miriam Beckstein is a young, hip business journalist in Boston. But her very well-connected family comes from an alternate reality, where they are a little too much like the mafia for comfort. Having escaped to yet anther world, Miriam remains in hiding from both her Clan and their opponents. With a nasty shooting war going on in Gruinmarkt, the world of the Clan, Miriam is shielded from danger, but also from information. And there’s a secret yet for Miriam to discover; something that she's really going to hate--if she lives long enough to find out.
From Publishers Weekly
Readers unfamiliar with Stross's Clan Corporate (2006) and its predecessors should hunt them down before diving into this breakneck fourth Merchant Princes episode. The clan, a Machiavellian trading dynasty whose members can cross among parallel universes, are losing control of their own affairs, embroiled in a shooting war with local royalty on the Gruinmarkt world and racing modern American black-ops agencies to unravel the secrets behind their world-walking ability. The latter subplot adds science-fictional flavor to a series already rich with economic and political themes and dense action scenes. The cost comes in characterization: familiar figures appear only briefly, and new players acquire little depth. Miriam Beckstein, journalist turned mercantile heiress, is still the nominal protagonist, but she spends most of this episode stuck one universe sideways from the main action. For sheer inventiveness and energy, this cliffhanger-riddled serial remains difficult to top. (Oct.)
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Review
“For sheer inventiveness and energy, this cliffhanger-riddled serial remains difficult to top.”
--*Publishers Weekly
“The world-building in this series is simply superb, in other words—it is engaging, crystal-clear and disturbingly real….. The Merchants' War* is fast-paced and engrossing and will leave readers ravenous for the next installment.”
--SciFi.com
"Charlie Stross' latest is a brilliant, amusing, and challenging piece of mestizo fiction -- recklessly cross-breeding fantasy and SF tropes, and using the resulting bonfire to say interesting things about culture, economics, politics, and really cool battles with chain-mail and MP5's and horses and hang-gliders. Very real people with very different backgrounds meet and collide and strike lovely sparks. This series is great and getting better all the time!"
--S.M. Stirling
“The action shifts rapidly among the three worlds in the fourth successive thriller in a fantastically thrilling series.”
--Booklist