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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
readable but a disappointment compared to the first two, August 7, 2006
The paradox about this third volume in the series is that although there's a lot of action, and many things happen, nothing happens in terms of character development or new ideas about communications between the worlds.
First off, this volume is not readable as a stand-alone. If you are new to the series, book 3 would make no sense whatsoever unless you read books one and two first - so if you're going to order this one, order all three. Second, although we have no new ideas and very little in the way of character in book 3, if you're reading the series, you'll have to read this one, or else book 4, when it comes out, will be unintelligible. In my opinion, book 3 should not have been published as a stand-alone at all, with its beginning in the middle of a conversation between two characters and its end in a cliff-hanger; Stross should have saved it and combined it with whatever will be in volume 4, for a larger book, one with more of a satisfying plot.
Such as it is, the plot of this book consists entirely of getting a few more of our-world characters aware of the existence of the Clan's world, and killing off a few important characters in each world in order to make way for whatever happens next. We get only about 5 seconds' worth of Miriam working on her technology-transfer business, and about 3 seconds of her flirting with James Lee, of the family that discovered the New Britain world, for romance. The rest is spies spying and the military plotting to blow things up (several different military organizations, in more than one world-line) and occasionally doing so.
As alternate history goes, since Miriam spends almost no time in New Britain in this volume, and most of her time in the Clan world is spent on internal business of royalty and etiquette, we don't really find out anything new about the differences between the worlds.
In short, unless you're interested in a few drug busts and a bit of military paranoia, the only thing to recommend this book is that it's a necessary bridge in the series. You could wait to cross that bridge until book 4 comes out, so that you actually have a destination, and then buy both volumes together.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
inconsistent New Britain descriptions?, May 27, 2006
Stross continues his engagingly complex series with this third book. He weaves an intricate plot, located in three parallel worlds - ours of the early 21st century, a backward medieval setting and one some 50 years or so behind us. Despite the fantastical looking aspect of the cover, this book, like its predecessors, is no fantasy excursion. Instead, it is a solidly grounded science fiction tale. If you are new to this series, seriously consider first reading the earlier books. Coming to this book cold can be rather confusing, and you'll miss a lot of nuances.
Stross came up with a brilliantly evocative terminology. In the world of New Britain, they have just detonated a fission bomb. They call it a corpuscular petard, inevitably and fetchingly abbreviated as 'corpse'.
There is one caveat with the book. In the earlier books, the New Britain society seems technologically equivalent to ours around 1900. That is, about a century behind. But in this book, they are now only some 60 years behind, being roughly where the US was in 1945, after having developed the atomic bomb. Granted, a basic plot statement is that there are worlds at different stages of development. However, the New Britain world seems to have jumped 40 years in less than a year's narrative. Somewhat jarring.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Stross lost the bits that made this a compelling story, October 13, 2006
I wrote a glowing review of the first book in this series, because Charles Stross had done something wonderful: give a character the ability to flit back-and-forth between alternate timetracks in two sort-of-parallel worlds. The second book in the series added the question, "What if there are *more* than two universes?" and our heroine, Miriam, naturally explored the answer while she experimented with the economics of "what can you carry on your back?"
While I wanted to know what happened in The Clan Corporate, reading it was a bit of a slog. That's because the story no longer has its anchor in a firm SF/F "what if?" question; it's just politics and intrigue and backstabbing. And it's not brilliantly done, I'm afraid; Miriam spends most of the time feeling like a pawn in someone else's game, and that's because she _is_. Things are done to her; she instigates very little, herself, and most of those decisions are fairly dumb. Nor do we have the opportunity to watch good character development. Even when she does things, she doesn't grow or learn very much from the experience.
Overall, quite a disappointment. I'll look at the next book in the series but I won't rush to get it, as I did with this one.
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