The Merchants' War

by Charles Stross

Book Overview

Miriam Beckstein is a young, hip, business journalist in Boston. She discovered in "The""Family Trade" and "The Hidden Family" that her family came from an alternate reality, that she was very well-connected, and that her family was too much like the mafia for comfort. She found herself caught in a family trap in "The Clan Corporate" and betrothed to a brain-damaged prince, and then all hell broke loose. Now, in "The Merchants' War," Miriam has escaped...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765316714
• ISBN13: 9780765316714
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Once Again Stuff Happens

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.

Excellent, fast-paced, very enjoyable!

_The Merchants' War_ is the exciting and fast-paced fourth volume in Charles Stross' outstanding Merchant Princes series. I really enjoyed it a lot, as many ideas that were introduced and developed in the first three volumes really come to fruition in this book. This installment finds the Clan in dire straights. They are essentially fighting a war on two fronts. In Niejwein Prince Egon, now King Egon, is waging a bloody and brutal war against the Clan and its supporters. With promises of great wealth and prestige (along with occasional threats of an untimely end if they refuse) many of the nobles are now aligning against the Clan. Though the Clan has powerful weapons and the advantage of world walking (they can for instance jump to our world, get in a car or even a plane, and then jump back over to Gruinmarkt, giving them a considerable advantage in speed) they have the disadvantage of smaller numbers and fighting an opponent who is doing his utmost to negate any advantages that the Clan may have (striking at more than one target for instance, making it hard to for the Clan to marshal its forces and strike hard via world walking as well King Egon himself making it supremely difficult for him to be assassinated). In the United States the Clan is now fighting the United States federal government (or at least, is running and hiding from it). Having already lost entire networks of safe houses and not a few couriers thanks to Matthias' treachery, the Clan has little idea that the American government is increasingly viewing them as a bigger and bigger threat thanks to their rising fears over nuclear weapons that they may have planted in American cities. Correction, that were planted in American cities, as the Family Trade Organization discovers one(the Family Trade Organization is the top secret federal agency assigned the task of studying the Clan and ending it as a threat, the organization comprised of relocated members of the intelligence, defense, and law enforcement communities, including Mike Fleming from the DEA, former boyfriend of Miriam). The Family Trade Organization is not content though with just playing defense on American soil; slowly but surely, first by use of captured couriers, they have put a few agents on Niejwein soil, hoping to gather intelligence, make a few friends, and even run some operations of their own. Mike even makes contact with some members of the Clan (who of course want to use this back door connection with the American government for their own ends). Foremost among the contacts that the FTO would like to make is with Miriam Beckstein, whom the FTO knows now is a world walker. The Clan would also like her back. Problem is no one quite knows where she is, as when she escaped Prince Egon's attack on his father and brother, she fled as best she could. The only knot she had to use to enable her to world walk lead her to New Britain, where she arrived shaken up, without money, in a bad part of town, believing tha

Fourth Book in the Series shares strengths and weaknesses of its predecessors

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.

Cliffhanger???

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!

whose universe?

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.