The Clan Corporate

by Charles Stross

Book Overview

Miriam Beckstein has gotten in touch with her roots and they have nearly strangled her. A young, hip, business journalist in Boston, she discovered (in "The""Family Trade" ) that her family comes from an alternate reality, that she is very well-connected, and that her family is a lot too much like the mafia for comfort. In addition, starting with the fact that women are family property and required to breed more family members with the unique talent...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765309300
• ISBN13: 9780765309303
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.7" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Very exciting third installment in the series

_The Clan Corporate_ is the exciting third book in the excellent Merchant Princes series by Charles Stross. In the first two novels, despite feeling very much a fish out of water in the strange world of Gruinmarkt, Miriam had some measure of control over her life. She was (and in this book, still is) resourceful, talented, bold, takes initiative, and is very accomplished at thinking on her feet. Unfortunately, that is not always enough in life. Things go from bad to worse for Miriam as after an unfortunate mistake she is locked up. Threatened with death for doing something regarded by the Clan as treason, she finds her options reduced from many to only one; world walkers are very valuable and rare and the Clan would absolutely love to have ties to the royal family - she is to marry one of the two princes and have at least several children, not only insuring the Clan continues to have a supply of world walkers but buying the Clan tremendous political connections and prestige. Cloistered in a castle, a virtual prisoner, forced by the Clan to learn their world's language, royal etiquette, and overall stop being Miriam (and American) and start being Helge, our protagonist finds herself isolated from actions that while not initiated by Miriam will very much affect her. First of all, the King's other son is not at all happy with Miriam's impeding marriage with his brother and takes action to prevent this. Second, the United States, working with the defector Matthias, has finally gotten a toe-hold in what they call "fairyland" (the Gruinmarkt). At first having come to appreciate the Clan as highly organized, well-informed, and very well armed cross-dimensional drug smugglers, they soon come to appreciate them as a far, far worse threat when Matthias gives them strong reason to believe that the Clan has planted nuclear weapons on our world. Enter Mike Fleming, a federal agent (and former boyfriend of Miriam's), a man who becomes part of a federal program design to study and if possible bring down the Clan. Though New Britain doesn't figure as much into the storyline as it did in the second volume in the series, important developments nonetheless occur there as well. Part of the book had a different tone than the rest of the series, the part that dealt with Miriam being locked up in the castle. For a time I had a hard time imagining how she would get out of that situation and Stross did a good job of generating sympathy for the character. The last part of the book stands in vivid contrast and was quite exciting, boding well for this excellent series. Overall I have found the series to be tremendously entertaining.

Not Free SF Reader

Hierarchical hardball. This is really just as good as the others, but an obvious part of a series. Miriam makes some mistakes, running into the royal spymaster. Breeding plans for her are afoot by the 'old bitches' as her mother and the King call them. Further complicating the plot, Matthias' defection in the last book has left a US alphabet soup agency force with the knowledge and Clan hostages to enable them to start making inroads into the situation. They are terrified of people teleporting nuclear weapons. Then, it all gets a bit Guns of Avalon if you like.

Good, solid writing.

It expands the basic story line and binds the various sub-plots together. However, this is a 'continuation' book. It's not the "suck in the reader and keep the reader on the edge of his seat" that the first two are. This book clearly is setting us up to buy book number four. But I will buy book four.

good continuation

I finished this third installment last night and mostly enjoyed it. I'd agree with other reviewers that it is a bit slow in places (the enforced inactivity and waiting is almost as frustrating for us as it is for Miriam), and the characterization of Miriam's mother is troublesome. I enjoyed the addition of Mike and the feds, and anticipating how things were going to come together. Anticipation plays a big part here--I'll keep reading, because I want to see what happens in the later books! I think Stross messed up his math on the genetic probablities. The world-walking ability is controlled by a recessive gene designated W*. If you have two of the genes you're a world-walker, if you have one you're a carrier. He says at one point that the king is a carrier and that any child of his has a one-in-four chance of being a carrier. Seems to me that it would have to be a 50/50 chance, since the king would pass along either his W* gene or his non-W* gene with equal probability. He also says that if Miriam and the carrier Prince reproduced their children would be world-walkers, but it should be that half would be world-walkers and half would be carriers.

inconsistent New Britain descriptions?

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.