The Family Trade

Stross' homage to Zelazny explores the concept of parallel worlds. I've just finished it, and it left me really wanting to read the other 5 books of the series (of which 3 more are currently in print.) For me, a fan of Zelazny's Amber, this was a fresh take on old favorates, with protagonists of more human scope... but it still involves Machiavellian family politics and Stross' usual 'ultra-current' technological and business perspective.

Charles Stross is one of the most prolific and diverse writers of SF at the moment, so it's not really fair to try to nail down what constitutes "typical Stross." But, most of his other books have left me a bit cold-- they were funny, smart, chock full of cool ideas, clever, and yet I never could quite connect with the books and particularly found the characters to be a little thinly drawn. The Merchant Princes books (starting with this one) is quite different on all of these fronts. The Family Trade et al., is certainly frothier and not nearly as jampacked with crazy, cool ideas and analyses (though certainly the book isn't fully lacking in these), and the quasi-Fantasy motif was initially surprising (though really despite the packaging it is science fiction in the end), but the characters (particularly the protagonist) are so fun and engaging that I couldn't wait to dive into the next one. And the next one. These aren't the books Stross will be remembered for in decades to come (and he will be remembered) but they're the ones that I enjoyed the most.

This is the first book In the Merchant Princes Series, and while the topic has been done before, a women from our world transplanted into a new world, Stross puts an interesting new spin on it. While many have compared this to Zelzaney's Amber Chronicles, this is more in line with Donaldson's Mordant's Need series, except for our heroine here is not a neurotic women with no sense of self, but a competent and strong women who knows how to handle things on her own and doesn't need some big strapping man to give her a sense of worth. Stross, typically a Science Fiction writer, invents one of the more interesting fantasy conundrums in recent history. He installs a sense of reality based ethics into a fantasy world, and maybe not intentionally, creates a interests counterpoint to many of the financial shenanigans we see in our modern world.

You have to love a book that starts out with this kind of a bang: "Ten and a half hours before a mounted knight with a machine gun tried to kill her, tech journalist Miriam Beckstein lost her job. Before the day was out, her pink slip would set in train a chain of events that would topple governments, trigger civil wars, and kill thousands." The trouble starts when Miriam uncovers an enormous money-laundering scheme. When she brings it to the attention of her boss, she's instantly fired. As it turns out, Miriam's now ex-employer's parent company is deep in the action. Miriam visits her ailing adoptive mother, who gives her newspaper articles about Miriam's birth mother --- a "Jane Doe" who was stabbed to death. The murdered woman's baby, Miriam, was adopted. Now Miriam's adoptive mother challenges Miriam to investigate the murder. Along with the papers, Miriam receives a locket worn by her murdered mother. As she examines it, she sees blue-white lights, smells burning toast, her stomach is upset, the light goes out, and she falls down. When she rises, she is no longer in her home. Instead, she's outside in a forest. As she attempts to orient herself, she spies a most disorienting sight --- armored knights riding horses toward her, and shooting at her. She gazes again at the locket and finds herself near her home. Miriam decides she must return to the mysterious place. Not only must she satisfy her journalist's curiosity, but she also needs to find the connection that the strange forest may have with her birth mother. After her life is threatened concerning her knowledge of the money-laundering scheme, she suspects that she may someday have to travel to the forest to hide. However, that makes her wonder: if her birth mother could have escaped to the other world, why hadn't she done so to escape her murderer? As Miriam sleeps in her own bed, she is kidnapped. Her kidnappers wear swords and call Miriam "your highness." The reader discovers what happens when take-charge Miriam finds herself in an unbearable and dangerous situation. Her actions set this series in motion, leaving us anxious for volume two of the series. Can Miriam single-handedly drag her new world out of the middle ages? Can she somehow change the despicable trade her family is engaged in? And, with her life in constant danger, will she survive to accomplish her lofty goals? THE FAMILY TRADE's characters are endearingly flawed and likeable. The pace is quick, with many unusual twists in the plot, and the story is riveting from the first sentence --- an excellent read! When, oh when, will Book Two be out? --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

Charles Stross is a relatively new writer who has already developed quite a track record of breathing new life into classic SF themes. In Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise were stories of interstellar adventure, but set in a post-singularity universe. In the Atrocity Archives he gave us spies vs. Lovecraftian horrors. Now, once again, it is time for something completely different. The Family Trade is a slim book that is clearly the first of a series (Merchant Princes). Miriam Beckstein is a financial reporter specializing in biotech. She is fired when she stumbles over a money-laundering scheme that her bosses have a stake in, and then discovers that she is the long lost child of a family of Merchant Princes from an alternate earth who have the genetic ability to cross from their medieval alternate earth to ours, and who have built up a financial empire based upon cross-world import/export and smuggling. The naive character suddenly over her head in an alien culture is a familiar SF theme, and Stross handles it expertly. The Merchant Princes have an essentially medieval attitude toward women, while Miriam is a modern, American, professional woman. The Merchant Princes have a complicated family structure (they are required to marry into the family to maintain expression of the recessive world-walking trait). Miriam must quickly find her balance in the complex family intrigues of the Princes before one of them decides to assassinate her (and assassination is hard to avoid when an assassin can suddenly pop in from an alternate world). But she has one key asset--her knowledge of modern business practices and her skills as an investigative journalist. Like Stross's other work, "The Family Trade" manages to bring back fond memories of classic stories without seeming at all derivative. In this case, I was beset by fond memories of Zelazny's "Nine Princes in Amber." And like the first book in Zelazny's Amber series, "The Family Trade" is frustratingly slim, ending just as it gets going really good. Nevertheless, while it left me wanting more (and soon; I hope he writes fast), "The Family Trade" is a satisfying read. However, be warned that if you get started on this series, you may well find yourself buying expensive hardcovers because you won't be able to wait for the next one to come out in paperback.