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"For sheer inventiveness and energy, this cliffhanger-riddled serial remains difficult to top."
--"Publishers Weekly
""The world-building in this series is simply superb, in other words--it is engaging, crystal-clear and disturbingly real....." The Merchants' War" is fast-paced and engrossing and will leave readers ravenous for the next installment."
--SciFi.com
"Charlie Stross' latest is a brilliant, amusing, and challenging piece of mestizo fiction -- recklessly cross-breeding fantasy and SF tropes, and using the resulting bonfire to say interesting things about culture, economics, politics, and really cool battles with chain-mail and MP5's and horses and hang-gliders. Very real people with very different backgrounds meet and collide and strike lovely sparks. This series is great and getting better all the time!"
--S.M. Stirling
"The action shifts rapidly among the three worlds in the fourth successive thriller in a fantastically thrilling series."
-"-Booklist"
Product Description
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 to yet another world and remains in hiding from both the Clan and their opponents. There is a nasty war going on in the Gruinmarkt world of the Clan, and we know something that Miriam does not; something that she's really going to hate-if she lives long enough to find out.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This (the fourth) is far and away the best (so far) of Charles Stross' "Merchant Princes" series. In contrast with the last volume, where she was rather tied down, Miriam is now a free(er) agent again, albeit on the run from the Clan, the New Britain "Polis" and the spooky "Family Trade Organisation". The Clan is fighting both the FTO and the would be King of Gruinmarkt, the medieval parallel world - and losing. And a democratic opposition in New Britain begins to stir.
Overall, the story rattles along, with new elements dropped in - a fourth world, and hints of where the Clan's abilities come from - and some moments of comedy - as when the Clan's troops go to war dressed as medieval reenactors - then it stops, right in the middle of a battle. I'm already impatient for the next volume.
One mystery I've spotted this time - though it's not new - someone is taping the Clan's discussions. Clearly not the FTO, and New Britian doesn't have the technology - so who?
Overall, the story rattles along, with new elements dropped in - a fourth world, and hints of where the Clan's abilities come from - and some moments of comedy - as when the Clan's troops go to war dressed as medieval reenactors - then it stops, right in the middle of a battle. I'm already impatient for the next volume.
One mystery I've spotted this time - though it's not new - someone is taping the Clan's discussions. Clearly not the FTO, and New Britian doesn't have the technology - so who?
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I like Stross and bought this book because it was the next in sequence about Miriam & her other world family. Unfortunately, I am frustrated because this (like the previous 3rd novel) is just a segment of a larger novel and one could get a feeling of being strung along for financial reasons.
As said by others, this book leaves you in the middle of a battle. Good writing, good characters, but not a book on its own. Wait for the compilation.
As said by others, this book leaves you in the middle of a battle. Good writing, good characters, but not a book on its own. Wait for the compilation.
Format:Mass Market Paperback
As I said about the earlier books, there were problems with this series, but by the time Stross got this far, the publisher had delivered their fiat about book length. This is the second half of what was once due to be a single book, but while the first half is still something of a mess, this is much better. The plot advances, still at a galloping pace (and at times I wished he'd slow down), but the book is highly enjoyable, and to be recommended along with the rest.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Best in the series so far
Probably my favourite volume of this series so far. The pace of the story-telling is just right and kept me turning the pages compulsively, right into a major cliffhanger! Read more
Published on 24 May 2010 by Colin Forbes
Deserves five stars, except for being no good at all without the...
Starting at the moment the previous volume left off, there's not much to say about this volume other than that it's full of juicy goodness, and again ends on something of a... Read more
Published on 25 July 2009 by D. R. Cantrell
High quality fiction
Book 4 of Merchant Princess series keeps providing the same qualities as the previous books in this series. Read more
Published on 1 Mar 2009 by Jalepe
Oh dear, he's done it again
I hate marking a book down but the author's cynical use of of yet another cliff-hanger ending deserve the low rating. Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2009 by varanger
Return to Form
This is the fourth in the Merchant Princes series, and returns to the fast-paced action of the first book that first drew me into this marvellous story of parallel worlds, dark... Read more
Published on 24 Dec 2008 by Alan Wake
Cliffhangers all over the place
"The Merchant's War" is book 4 of the Merchant Princes series. The premise behind the series was kind of fun - parallel earths that are less developed than our earth combined with... Read more
Published on 20 Nov 2008 by Fjm Turner
An improvement
I liked this book better than the last in the series. Now that we're on book 4, some of the books will stand out more than others. Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2008 by bookaholic
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