The Merchants' War
Book Four of the Merchant Princes
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4.5 • 15 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The story of the worldwalkers just got stranger in Charles Stross's The Merchants' War. More worlds, more surprises. And there's a war going on ...
Miriam Beckstein is a young, hip, business journalist in Boston. She discovered in The Family Trade and The Hidden Family that her family came from an alternate reality, that she was very well-connected, and that her family was too much like the mafia for comfort. She found herself caught in a family trap in The Clan Corporate and betrothed to a brain-damaged prince, and then all hell broke loose.
Now, in The Merchants' War, Miriam has escaped to yet another world and remains in hiding from both the Clan and their opponents. There is a nasty shooting war going on in the Gruinmarkt world of the Clan, and we know something that Miriam does not; something that she's really going to hate--if she lives long enough to find out.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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.
