Customer Reviews

The Merchants' War: Book Four of the Merchant Princes

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The other reviews cover what happens in the course of the book, I won't go into all that, I am here to issue a warning to other potential readers....

The bast... Er, that is, the 'Esteemed Author' does not end the book on what I would call a cliffhanger. No, the term cliffhanger implies that the reader still has the very edge of one pinky finger's nail still in contact with the crumpling lip of a precipice. That is not the case here. The story ends with the reader plummeting through thin air screaming in fear and fury, wondering if/when they will ever hit book five. So, if you have a strong heart, go ahead and read it. If, however, you have ever failed a stress test, wait until book five comes out to read this one - your cardiologist will thank you!

The 4th book in Stross' Merchant Princes series lets him introduce even more entanglements into 3 Earths bound by world walkers. He takes several complexities from earlier books and spins them up. Of course, otherwise why would we keep reading?

One neat aspect is that he now explicitly disavows any magical aspect. Some reviewers, in science fiction mags, of earlier books, had pigeonholed the series as fantasy. Even in those books, it really did not play out as such, if you read carefully. In this book, he comes forth with what is really scientific abracadra, but very well done, to provide a plausible technological veneer over the ability to hop between worlds.

There does appears to be one error. In the world of New Britain, a local person makes a remark about "from Washington to New York". Dubious. This was a universe where the American Revolution was crushed. There would have been no town at the location of what we call Washington, under that name. Granted, the person was told various details about our world by Miriam, as expressed in earlier books. So if there was indeed a town there, he might have translated its name into Washington, as he chatted with Miriam. But, it seems unlikely. Instead he would have used his familiar name for the town. Stross doesn't usually slip up, so this is a little gem, for those of you who appreciate such things.

However, is the familiar Boston and the United States from our universe? If not, it is certainly very close, given all the details we recognise. Stross slips in remarks about how the US might go into Iraq after Hussein?! The year is after 2001, because of the many references to "9/11" and terrorists. But what year? If after 2003, then that universe is not ours. Maybe Stross reserves the right to use this in future books. I simply can't recall from the earlier books if you can deduce how many years after 2001 is it.

The mention of perhaps invading Iraq is clearly meant to be jarring. Interesting to see if Stross expands on this dangling thread.

The book also has more action than the 3rd volume. Hopefully, this will assuage the many others who panned the latter as uneventful.

The Merchants War is the fourth book in Charles Stross series about a clan of world-walking drug dealers, and the book shares the strengths and the weaknesses of the previous volumes and ramps up the action and plot nicely.


Book Three, Clan Corporate ended with a marriage announcement and gathering that went horribly wrong as, simultaneously, agents from a US Government agency managed to make their way across to the world of the Gruinmarkt into the middle of a gathering set to marry the heroine, Miriam, to a brain-damaged son of the King, and said gathering went up in flames.

Book Four shows the smoke clearing from that event as Egon, elder son of the King, takes control of the situation and decides Something Must Be Done. At the same time, Miriam, barely escaped into the third world of New London, has new problems with the police forces in that world. And of course Mike, part of that op across to that world, has problems of his own.

What's more, not content with merely working out the consequences of these plots, Stross throws a new puzzle in the mix, and starts to answer a long standing question of the series: just what is the mechanism that allows the Family to really worldwalk in the first place.

Splendid, vivid writing, great plot and action and character bits make this another winner for Mr. Stross. I particularly liked Mike's view of Olga, a character we've seen before through Miriam, and now get new sides and facets as we see her through the eyes of Mike, and get a sense that she's even more competent that we really knew. The world and set up are just as intriguing as before, if not more so, with the revelations made in the book.

The major flaw in the book, and once again its not Stross' fault, really, is the marketing. The book, like a couple of the previous books, has an "ending problem". These books have been sliced and diced and released in a suboptimal way, in my opinion. The book simply ends without a real attempt at a crescendo.

Still, fans of the previous three novels will love this one, and if you haven't started reading this series--go get the Family Trade and get yourself started. World walking scions, battles in a medieval world with guns and an ultralight(!), intrigue, mystery, fine writing and character development. Its a tasty chili of goodness.

The first two novels in this series had the feel of well contained (if short) novels, but the third novel leaves us with a cliff hanger that might as well finish, "Tune in next week to find out what happens to our dashing heroine." The fourth book also ends with a cliff hanger, in my opinion even more blatant than that of book three.

So, we are now firmly in serial novel territory, and I think that is a bad thing for several reasons. First, we devoted readers are forced to wade through the background information repeatedly, which is increasingly dominating these slender books. Second, the story is fragmenting to the point that it is a chore to follow the shifts among story lines that are now barraging us several times per chapter. Third, and related to the previous point, Miriam has been marginalized to a frustrating degree. In book three she becomes a self-pitying pawn, and in book four she does absolutely nothing of real interest for the entire book (and no new characters are developed with sufficient depth to be compelling).

As a science fiction reader, I actively seek out books that are based on original ideas. From that perspective I am still quite satisfied with this series. However, I would be much happier if it were comprised of three or four much more developed books, rather than an endless series that only slightly advances the story with each volume. Reading these books is starting to feel like work.

This series by Charles Stross alternately leaves me breathless for more, and at other points I'm ready to be distracted by almost any other book.

Let me start with the most irritating bit: the ending doesn't. The novel has no closure - it's just another chapter that leaves you on a cliffhanger. So if your attitude coming to The Merchants' War is "I might catch up with this series sometime, but I'm not in a big rush," it wouldn't hurt to wait for the next in the series. (I am annoyed by this. Give me SOME kind of ending, please.)

On the plus side, you note that I read it all the way through, and I obviously wanted to know what happened next. That's because Stross has created some pretty cool characters whose lives I want to watch. The protagonist isn't the coolest of them, though. Miriam might be the "main character," but it's because she's a catalyst and not cuz she's an inherently fascinating person. (Mike, on the other hand, is cool.)

The initial premise of the series is still golden: a very small set of people who, by gazing at a knotwork graphic, can transport themselves (and what they personally carry) to an alternate-history version of where they're standing right this second. Through the course of the books (and really, don't even imagine starting with this one) we've gotten to see how this ability has shaped "our" world and a few others.

Here, we have Miriam escaped from Certain Doom (that is, the last page of the previous book) and on the run. The viewpoint switches between various people whose lives she's directly or indirectly touched, and each of those people have their own goals and justifications. Some of these people's stories are more compelling than others, with irregular pacing that made me wish whole scenes had been cut ("Enough already!").

But at some point, Stross just got into the storytelling again... and I was happy to follow along.

Can you tell that I'm ambivalent about this book? I am. If you're completely in love with the series (and I can imagine how you might feel that way), go right ahead and buy it. I did like it; I just didn't love it. The Merchants' War isn't on my list of novels that I will press upon friends and strangers.

Book four in this series is a quick and fun read. Charles Stross has taken the concept of alternate realities and stood it on its end, creating a wonderful mish-mash of different styles and scenes that keep you reading feverishly from page to page. Machine-gun toting medieval knights? Got 'em. Sinister Dickensian alternate Americas? Check. Shadowy US government departments attempting to find out just what the heck is going on and how they can profit from it? Oh yeah. I was hoping for more action than we had gotten in book three and I was not disappointed. The only problem I forsee is waiting for the tying together of all the story arcs, since they seem to still be unfolding. This series might have more in common with Zelazny's Amber than just the family of world-hopping nobility. This one could easily go ten books without sweating. I for one hope it does.

Before proceeding to the review, I just have to do this: "First post!"

Ahem. I return you to the review in progress.

Reading this book, I'm reminded that many of Charles Dickens's books came out as serials (e.g., "Oliver Twist" in Bentley's Miscellany).

Since these books are coming out as a sort of serial, but not in a periodical, the author cannot depend on people reading them in sequence. Hence he faces the problem of introducing plot devices that get the new reader familiar with the back story without boring people like me, who've been buying these books as soon as they come out. The result is a bit of a mixed bag, I'm afraid. On balance, *I* would prefer more forward-moving plot action and less recapitulation.

Still, I'll be coming back for more.

PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOW!


In this book most of the action takes place between the Clan world and our world. New Britain is there mostly as a bolt hole for Miriam, but even here she's hunted by the local police and the Clan. She switches between New Britain and the other worlds in order to avoid sticky situations.

As for the rest, well, if you read the last book, you'll probably be expecting a Clan/Nobility war, and the book delivers. All sorts of fun plot twists there, including one side employing an ultralight, while the other gets M60s. After a bunch of initial losses, it looks like the Clan's going to fight back successfully. Given an unexpected pregnancy - a Clan member carrying a royal child, the stage is set for Clan survival and ultimate victory. Oh, there's all sorts of skulduggery going on.

The search for the nuke in Boston leads to a doubly-interesting discovery, and the Clan starts to explore the multiverse. The end result? There appear to be more people world-walking than anyone ever imagined, and using different technologies to do so. Oh, and I see lots of room for abstract algebra in world-walker map-making. Meanwhile, US government agencies start working on understanding what enables world-walking. So, the whole world-walking stage looks like it's about to get a lot more crowded.

In other words, there's plenty of space for a long, long series. I hope there are plans for a graphic novel.

What else? Well, the author takes a couple of tiresome swipes at the US and its Government. This is becoming a bit of an unfortunate side to his writing. Not enough to make me stop reading him, but it does take away from the enjoyment. That said, I'll be back for more.

The prior book almost made me give up on this series, but this book restored my hope. After a book where the protagonist spent the entire book under house arrest, we finally have things happening again. In this book, people begin to actually do the sort of research on the interdimensional travel that one would think a scientist would do, with interesting results. There is also a lot of intrigue and plotting, and law enforcement do NOT act like idiots. This is a book where the one "magic" element is a "black box" the implications of which are worked throgh thoroughly by smart charecters. Even the "bad guy" is very clever. Oddly, the protagonist is the only one who doesn't accomplish much in this book. The book ended a bit abruptly, however.

This forth volume continued the trend of containing more and more of what I don't care about - Stross isn't great at military sci-fi, nor did I care for all the story parts which take part in the real United States. I was hooked with the world travelling mafia idea but this isn't it, there are too many distractions, the writing is stereotypical, there is no character development, and there isn't much going on overall at all. Predictable too. Not worth the money.

This book is from a very good series but like the last two in the series is doesn't work as a stand alone. It takes up right after the last books action spends the majority of the book slowly building climax, adding an intiguing new twist to the series which isn't explored, and ends right when things just start getting good. This series will work best in ten years or so when he has written 2-4 more and finished the series. At that point when you get to the end of each book you can just pick up the next and continue.
The last page of this book might as well have the TO BE CONTINUED GRAPHIC from back to the future. Since this book has just been released don't expect it to be continued for at least 6-8 months and then that one will need to be continued in another 6-8 months until Mr. Stross decides to move on and then perhaps there will be some sort of ending.

In the meantime if you want to get caught up in interdimensional family drama that carries you along and keeps you coming back for more check out the Amber books by Roger Zelazney.