Customer Reviews

The Hidden Family (The Merchant Princes, Book 2)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Hidden Family picks up at the end of The Family Trade and continues that story's basic premise, in both good and bad fashion. In the good, the story remains fast-paced, a quick and entertaining if not too deep read. Stross introduces us to another world here, one that lies somewhere between our own and the Clan's both technically and socially, opening new and more interesting settings. Miriam remains an active, strong character, joined by others equally strong. Questions from book one are answered while new ones are raised. And as he did in book one with regard to the medieval setting, Stross continues to capture the gritty reality of non-modern times, unlike many fantasy authors, though at times he does so too obviously, as when he has one of his characters shrilly make that point in a lengthy paragraph.
On the bad, the story continues to be bedeviled by jargon. Miriam still is too accomplished, too pre-set in convenient fashion to take over the situations. The characters still lack some depth and the romance, as it was in book one, reads as if Stross can't decide if he wants it realistic or as parody. And some of the questions answered seem a bit too pat or contrived. The book does come to some resolution at the end though it also obviously leaves room for more.
If the first book was mildly recommended, this one is as well, perhaps less so as one would hope for some improvements between one and two. The addition of the second world does add interest, however, so recommended it is, if not with a lot of excitement.

The Hidden Family, book 2 of the Merchant Princes saga picks up where book one left off. Miriam Beckstein was a journalist for a Red Herring-like magazine focusing on the Massachusetts bio-tech industry. A heretofore hidden past makes that life almost impossible to continue. In book 2, Miriam decides to strike out on her own to discover who has been trying to assassinate her as well as establish a business foothold of her own so that she can deal with her avaricious and unpleasant family from a position of power.

Very much mental chewing gum, The Hidden Family is a mildly interesting if sometimes irritating read. Miriam is a pleasantly strong female character but far too glib and adaptable to her circumstances while her circumstances are too accommodating for her. She manages to move through the action of the book without any serious obstacles to her plans. There's no sense that she could encounter a significant setback that would endanger her entire scheme at any moment that would require her ingenuity and intelligence to resolve.

Miriam knows all the questions and has all the answers, even in places she's never set foot in, before.

While most of the female characters come across as fairly strong, independent women they are interchangeable, without distinctive voices or personalities. There were times I had to re-read passages to determine which female character was speaking, when two or more were in a scene. Mr. Stross does slightly better at making the male characters distinct but all the men, every last one, are from Central Casting. None of the characters, male or female, inspire strong emotions in the reader. There is no 'evil' character he offers up that has a sympathetic side to them and there is no 'good' character that has a repellant side to them (except one that is never, ever exploited in either book). The supposedly Machiavellian maneuverings of her extended family are never very Machiavellian or very subtle and her brief confrontations with them at the end of the book come across more as petty familial squabbling than the nuanced maneuverings for advantage that the author intimates.

The 'romance' in the book has all the emotional heat of a clean, empty charcoal grill. While I appreciate that the author wants to focus on action and not sex I'd like to have seen why there was an intense attraction between Miriam and Roland rather than being told repeatedly it was there. While, in Denis Leary's words, 'chicks dig jerks' (sadly true) one cannot quite believe 'chicks dig wimps' even good looking, exquisitely dressed ones. Miriam isn't that shallow in other areas of her life, why is it the case with Roland?

Beyond these quibbles, Mr. Stross uses phrases like 'pocket torch' interchangeably with 'flashlight' and other differences in expression and slang that I can't think of specifically at this instant. There are continuity issues with the slang, minor characters and settings that a good editor should probably have caught.

One last thing. It's pneumatic tires not pneumonic tires. A good editor should have caught that, too.

My husband is a fan of Zelazny which is why he's drawn to these books and it was on his recommendation I read them. I won't be rushing to read the third book in the series if there is one.

Charles Stross is a true genre bender. Just when you think you've got him pegged he goes off in a different direction. Often several ways at once. Stross is one of those authors who has a good idea and promptly writes a book about it. And if it works out, he writes another book and makes a series of it. The Merchant Princes explores the idea of inter-dimensional travel, from, of all things, a business perspective.

In the first volume, The Family Trade, freelance journalist Miriam Beckstein discovers that she isn't Miriam Beckstein, but Helge Thorvold-Hjorth, a member of a clan in another dimension that has discovered how to travel to our own, and have set up a drug dealing business in order to buy goodies for their otherwise primitive, barely post-feudal, lifestyle. Think medieval mafia and you will have the big picture. In between various attempts on her life Miriam realizes that the Thorvold-Hjorth business model has reached its limits and she sets off, credit card in hand to make money where no journalist has gone before. Hence this novel, The Hidden Family.

Miriam, in the process of trying to discover who is plotting against her, discovers that there is more than one plot afoot. Somebody else besides the Clan can trip the dimensions fantastic and this new group has discovered an entirely new world of their own, something of a combination of an early 19th Century lifestyle with a good deal of modern science mixed in. Call it techno-Gothic. With three worlds before her, Miriam quickly realizes the opportunities for profit and sets about making a large profit while dodging assassins and plots to wrest her position and power away from her.

This is a great story, but it has some severe believability problems. The most glaring of this is how easy it is for Miriam to set up as an entrepreneur in a world that frowns on women doing much more than child-bearing and tatting. Especially when her stock in trade are things like advanced automobile breaks. Going in the other direction her plan is to track down artworks that were lost in this world, but still exist in the other. It seems to me that setting up in business as a rediscoverer of lost masterpieces is bound to attract a lot of unwelcome attention.

However, if you can manage the willing suspension of disbelief, this is an interesting story that is completely different from run-of-the-mill dimension hopping. Miriam is tough and determined to succeed, and if she doesn't get caught, she is destined to be a billionaire. Now how often do you get to read a series about a billionaire journalist?

Before I jump into the review, I have to point out that one of the other reviewers attributed the Riverworld series to Roger Zelazny -- wrong, it was Philip Jose Farmer who wrote the Riverworld books.

I have become a fan of Charles Stross, and have now read all five of the novels (which I am aware of) that he has in print. He definitely knows how to grab the reader (at least this reader!).

I liked this particular book better than I liked The Family Trade. The Family Trade seemed to me to start out awkwardly. I have done some (so far uncommercial) writing myself, and I have noticed something I think of as the "transition point" -- before this point, I feel like I'm just making stuff up, while after this point, I feel like it's all real and the characters and the situation are forcing things in a certain direction. The Family Trade felt like Stross "just making up stuff" almost halfway through. If I hadn't read others of his before this one, I might have given it up as a loss. The second half certainly took off!

The Hidden Family, of course, started out without this problem, the characters and the main background having been already set up in the first book. I liked the way Stross thickened the plot by bringing in another alternate world along with the long-lost kinfolk, as well as the intrigue etc. (no spoilers here!).

Others have commented on the realism of the pre-modern settings, Stross' grasp of factors that many fantasy authors tend to ignore, and so on. I have only one minor (very minor!) quibble, and that is the fact that Stross writes like an Englishman, and sometimes his American characters don't sound American to me at all! There is one sequence in the story where one character is telling the other to "come on!," and I kept hearing it in my mind's ear as "COME on," rather than the American "come ON." I suppose it came out like that because of the surrounding dialogue etc. As I said, this is very minor (most readers probably would never notice), and won't keep me from buying his next novel in hardcover, the minute it comes out.

It's a decent sequel, so if you liked the first book this one will probably satisfy your appetite for 'what happens next.' Stross has a lot of fun playing with ideas and what-ifs--and if anything there are too *many* concepts to fit the plot.
As a reviewer noted upthread, it's almost like the basics for one really chewy, excellent book were split into sketchy form in two books. It's rather frustrating because the promise of so many strong, interesting elements are never fully developed.
The main character is fine; rather a relief, in fact. She's smart and resilient without being hokey-spunky. (I'm really, really tired of spunky heroines.) She's fairly well filled out, though not really developed. C'mon, she's deliberately changing entire worlds to suit her convictions. That rates some serious background right there. Iris, her feisty ex-radical adoptive mother, is a fine character gone begging. Brill, the relocated fugitive from the medieval world, provides some interesting takes on modern life but even her dazzled adoption of the modern world is basically occassional filler.
The lack of strong character development presented a problem for me in keeping some of the byzantine power struggles straight. Too many of the players left me wondering, "Now, which one is HE again?" Most of them are little more than names, with maybe a titch of physical description thrown in once. A book built around warring factions needs hooks at least to keep overt team rosters straight.
I *liked* this book, so don't take this review as a pan. It's not. The book is a fast, fun, interesting read. It just whets interest that it doesn't really fulfill. The basics are there; it just could have been a terrific book instead of just a pretty good one.

The first of the Merchant Princes books was largely devoted to setting up the characters and establishing the background. With the second book, Stross shifts into high gear, with Miriam now setting up a business and becoming involved in subversive politics on world three while juggling family intrigues on the world of the Merchant Princes. As with the first book, "The Hidden Families" manages to recall Zelazny's Amber series without seeming derivative. The conclusion is more satisfactory than the first volume, in that some matters are actually resolved, but there is still plenty of meat for future books in the series.

It is a rather slim volume, just over 300 pages of fairly large type, and the story moves fast, so it is over far too soon. I can only hope that Stross keeps them coming at regular intervals.

I give this book 5 stars for potential and 1 for execution. My wife and I both read it, both found the first book "The Family Trade" very intriguing, loved the main character and the ideas. But since TOR ripped Stross's book in half, the first book basically has no ending.

So on to the second book. Lots of great ideas and storylines, but again, we felt the hand of TOR... there were WAY more storylines here than Stross could manage, and a lot of our favorite elements of the story got buried under unnecessary complications and characters that suddenly pop in from nowhere. I know this is probably an excuse to have another book in the series, but I felt like Stross didn't even TRY to have a satisfying ending. Doesn't make me want to read any of his other work. Too bad!

After being very disappointed with The Family Trade I swore off ever reading another book by Charles Stross. The book was simply bad with poor writing, cliché, and poor description. Yet, the more I read about the author and the book the more I saw that his work is well regarded and acclaimed. I couldn't figure it out. Sure, The Family Trade was not challenging to read and had a good idea behind it, but Stross turned me off in the first ten pages of the book when his protagonist dove into her closet and ripped open a bag with her teeth. The rest of the book did not get worse, but nothing changed my initial impression of the book or the author...from this one book he seemed to be a rank amateur who got a chance to publish his book and not the award winning science fiction author he is. But as the positive reviews kept piling up I was getting curious about The Hidden Family. See, The Hidden Family is actually the second half of a book that was originally called The Merchant Princes. The book began with The Family Trade and was split by the publisher. Supposedly the story was much stronger when taken as a whole. I was curious where Stross would take the story and decided to give Charles Stross one final chance with the full expectation that I would be thoroughly disgusted.

In the first volume Miriam discovered that she was parting of the ruling elite of a Clan of Six Families...but this Clan is not part of the world in which she lived. She lived in our modern day Earth as a technology journalist. When she is about to break a huge story with a scandal she finds herself hunted by men who want to kill her. The threat is far greater than she imagined and her history is not what she expected. She is given a shoe box by her adopted mother which contains a locket belonging to her real mother (now deceased). The locket transported her to an alternate world which has not risen above the medieval ages in terms of technology and lifestyle. It is in this world that she has a family, a powerful family...some of whom wish harm upon her. Throughout the novel she tries to learn what is truth and tries to keep herself alive. In the end she learns about a hidden sixth family and a locket which may lead to a third world.

This catches up to The Hidden Family and does not quite cover the novel but is as good as can be done in a short paragraph. In this book Miriam explores the third world and tries to set up a business so she can strengthen the Clan and her position, legitimize the business of the Clan, and stop the attempts on her life. This is actually far more interesting than one might think. Stross is able to make each of the three worlds feel very different and very real. There is a true sense of discovery in The Hidden Family as we learn the nature of this third world and several other surprises about the "hidden family" and also her own family.

With how disappointed I was with The Family Trade, I expected to loathe The Hidden Family. I didn't. I didn't "love" the book, but I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and Stross has written an interesting fast paced novel. There is still an awkward line or three, such as characters talking about almost getting "rubbed out" rather than almost being "killed", but nothing is nearly as distracting as the first novel. Stross has somehow made setting up a business an interesting plot point and that he is able to do so in a book that was written as part of the same larger novel which contained the dreadful The Family Trade is remarkable. I don't understand how the first half of the book (FT) could be so bad and the second half (HF) be decent enough that I will read the third volume. I don't know if I would have enjoyed a full 600 page Merchant Princes because I think the first half would have tainted the second half, but given a year or two break in between reading the volumes I was able to enjoy The Hidden Family. It is quite possible that Stross is an ideas man who isn't able to execute as well as he can think up interesting story ideas, but it will take a read or two of his science fiction to know for sure.

-Joe Sherry

Life gets even more interesting and complicated for Miriam/Helge, as she tries to learn her way around the Clan and Gruinmarkt, establish an independent foothold which will give her a negotiating position with the Clan, discovers a second pattern and a third world, and generally learns that being non-political is not an option. It's not too far off the mark to say that everything she thinks she knows is wrong, and a lot the Clan thinks it knows is wrong, too.

The story begun in The Family Trade comes to a satisfactory conclusion, but there's room for more stories, and we haven't heard the last of Miriam or her troublesome family. Again, highly recommended.

The problem with this book is that it is too short. it is more like a chapter than a book. (It only took a few hourse to read). Also, now that I have read two of them, I think Stoss should "deepen" the texture a bit; build characters more, create more depth overall. The books feel a little bit outline-ish to me. No more so than Zelazny, but I always wanted more from him, too. (a little bit of Neal Stephenson would be good). Overall, I love the concept and look forward to the next one.