The Merchants’ War
The Merchants’ War is book four in Charles Stross’ Merchant Princes series which follows the adventures of Miriam, a tech journalist from Boston who discovers she is the long lost daughter of a family of world walkers who live in an alternative parallel universe which is still stuck in the medieval age.
If you haven’t read any of the books in this series, then I recommend that you skip the rest of this spoilerific review and get hold of the first books in the series and read them. If you like the idea of mixing history up like bringing machine guns into a medieval battle and a bit of sociology and collision of cultures then you’ll like these books.
Also, if you haven’t read this one yet and you care, then come back and read this when you have.
At the end of book three, Miriam zapped herself into the steam age world to escape an exploding building and book four takes Miriam deeper into the world of “New London” and steam-age Boston with all its unfamiliar and dangerous politics. Meanwhile Mike the DEA agent in over his head and his spooky friends zero in on the clan in modern America. The new King Egon wastes no time in executing plans to waste the clan in the Gruinmarkt leaving poor Duke Angbard in a spot of bother. Brill is assigned the job of bringing Miriam back to the clan while some new characters Huw and his gang discover yet another world.
I really really enjoyed this book and found it a little more satisfying than the previous one (The Clan Corporate) because it seemed to end at better place. I remember getting to the end of The Clan Corporate and going “Is that it? Are you just going to leave it all hanging like that!?” This one ends on a cliff hanger too – in the middle of a desperate battle in fact but other characters stories kind of wind up and converge a bit more nicely. I’m looking forward to the next books but hoping if Stross is going to keep the series going for many more books, that the stories can be more self contained. He does this well with the Laundry books ( Atrocity Archives and Jennifer Morgue) but I realise the story of the Clan is on a much bigger scale so it has to be told in parts.
[tags]books, charles stross, fantasy, the merchants’ war, the merchants’ war[/tags]
