The Trade of Queens

It felt like it took almost the first half of the book just to rehash what happened in the second half of the previous book, before anything substantively new happened. But rather than using the remaining pages to wrap up the many many loose ends, Stross utilises a lot of them to eviscerate Cheney and Rumsfeld. Rather than the satirical approach he took in the Laundry Files, here he calls them out by name, and makes no bones about their warmongering. While it's certainly his prerogative to write about what he wants and use his writing as a platform to express political views, I think that it ended up detracting from the quality of the book. Too many exciting subplots were abandoned and wonderful characters sacrificed to make his point. show more

Worst of all, the book (and hence the entire series) doesn't really come to any sort of satisfying conclusion, it just sort of peters out. Miriam is abandoned as the focus of attention (just like poor Bob in the Laundry Files), which is a shame because there was still much more for her to do.
Obviously a lot of this was deliberate, with Stross making the point that petty squabbles are inconsequential in the face of existential threats. But that's little comfort for the reader who has endured hundreds of pages of build-up and justifiably expects some sort of payoff at the end. Just as with the Bush administration's lack of exit strategy for Iraq, Stross has declared it over and hopes we don't notice.

This is the way the book ends
This is the way the book ends
This is the way the book ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

show less

Without a full review or a lot of spoilers, it's hard to explain why I liked this so much less than the previous volumes in the series. I'll just say two things: (1) I don't think this provides a satisfying wrap-up for most of the story lines started in the earlier books, but the acknowledgements in the front make it clear that there won't be another book to tie things up. (2) In this volume, the main story turns a corner in this book into a very different place, and one I don't really want to be in, especially when I'm hoping to enjoy some low-fantasy espionage, like the rest of the series provides. Sigh.

This is the sixth book, and final installment featuring these characters, of "The Merchant Princes." Alternate history novels about time-continuum-hopping people from an alternate America that's feudally run and stuck in ~1500 technologically; the few people who can hop between our own USA and their world (called "the Gruinmarkt") are rich beyond measure in both worlds.

The price they exact from our own USA is high, being the best and most successful of drug smugglers; the price they pay in the Gruinmarkt is equally high, being seen as witches and marked for persecution and destruction if possible.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Do the words "Final Solution" ring a bell?

So this entry in the series takes up from the point of amazing show more and unimaginably horrifying cataclysm in the USA that ends the last book. In fact, the series really reads like a very long single novel that's been broken into parts by the publisher, much like what happened to "The Lord of the Rings" may it rot.

The book, as a result, will make no sense whatever to anyone not familiar with books 1-5. But for the initiates, this is **amazing** fantasy fulfillment and the sense that Stross leaves one with is that the next generation will be even more excitingly relevant to today's world.

In this entry, after the horrible cataclysm in the USA, an even more horrifying cataclysm is unleashed by the USA in the Gruinmarkt, and the main characters are frantically busy trying to prevent, then ameliorate, then escape the said disaster. It seems that their world-walking abilities aren't Divine in origin, and the USA expended huge resources to come up with a technological means of doing the same thing.

NOW they've done it, those Gruinmarkt fools! The USA is angry, and being run by a horrifying, evil former Vice President whose vileness and slime-dripping reactionaryness is too little for the even more vile Secretary of Defense. A coup is engineered, a shift in power to the so-far-right-they-can't-be-seen is validated by a sheeplike populace, and cross-dimensional havoc is unleashed.

For the politically and religiously conservative: Don't read these books. Your wrong-headedness comes in for a long, long, long bashing. Stross doesn't like conservatism. As I don't, either, ours was a match made in heaven, but for those otherwise inclined, I think he'd sound strident.

Recommended for those, like me, who feel disenfranchised by the rightward swing of the cultural conversation. But start at the beginning! Read [The Family Trade] first! show less

In a lot of ways, this was basically "What if every horrible thing you suspected about the Bush Administration was not only true, but way, way worse?" The alternate-universe aspect was almost incidental to the black fantasy about President Cheney after another terrorist attack. I probably should have gone ahead and reread the whole series before hitting this one - a lot of the details are fuzzy in my head - but it's still a pretty fascinating setup.

Below par for Stross, but still a reasonably satisfying conclusion to the series. The plot infodumps in the early chapters are inelegantly handled (he might as well have had a chapter entitled "Previously, in the Merchant Princes..."), and the political cynicism is laid on with a trowel, but the observations on the clash of cultures between a feudal aristocracy, modern US democracy and a quasi-British socialist revolution are sharp and the characters remain well drawn and engaging (mostly - the British parallel universe in particular contains some shallow foils).
If you are new to Stross, don't start here, but worth reading if you've been following the series.

Sadly, this is the last book in this series. Most series end by running out of steam, their plots all worn out. This series, unusually, still has multiple plotlines left.

The core concept, which started out as a fantasy device, is a North American setting of alternate realities, which certain individuals can 'jump' between, when staring at a unique pattern for the destination reality. The 'World Walkers' from families with this ability use it to run illegal drug operations in one alternate reality that resembles contemporary America. There are two different 'crime' families, who fell out in a feud in times past. Miriam, the lead character, brought up in the American 'reality', is an heir, via her mother, to leadership of the main show more 'Family'.

She has essentially driven the plot throughout the series, as her American upbringing and original ideas continually grate against the conservative Family 'old guard'. Miriam discovers another reality, a British colony isolated by a powerful France, in which revolution against its failed monarchy is brewing. She creates new business here and makes a friend who ends up high in government after the revolution breaks. She even makes contact with the despised 'lost family'.

In this final book the Family old guard make their play. Despite deals with the corrupt US VP, they steal suitcase nukes and use them against Washington as a warning. The US though has researched alternate world jumping and cracked the science behind it. An attack to wipe out the Families is planned, with the added bonus of access to all the oil in the 'Texas' of the Family reality. Miriam and her supporters flee to the 'revolution' reality but bump into elements of the lost Family in league with a ruthless doctor who was running a hidden breeding program for world walkers. The only weak element of this book is how much it drops the reader into things: there are "info-dumps" but they are few and far between. Do not start reading here.

While plot threads are tied up, others could be opened by the use of other alternate Americas, discovered in this series but not explored. Even if no more books are ever forthcoming, this series would work well on television. show less

Dark stuff, and a little more cynical about the Bush administration than even I am willing to get. But I really enjoy books that treat politics seriously, with all the calculations, interests, and issues that come from that. Stross does a better job of it than almost any sci-fi writer in the field. CJ Cherryh does it well, too, but her books move a bit too slow for me.