The Revolution Business

The Merchant Princes #5

by Charles Stross

Things are going badly for the Clan in this new SF novel of the Merchant Princes, the immensely popular series by Charles Stross. Locked in a vicious civil war for control over the kingdom of Niejwein, their army is bottled up inside a fortress under siege in two parallel universes at once. Duke Angbard, the Clan€™s leader, has been laid low by a plotters are already conspiring in readiness for the deadly dance to come. Miriam, rescued from a tight spot in New Britain, finds the hopes of the young, progressive faction focused on her. But do they want her as a leader or a figurehead? She soon finds herself thrown into a desperate struggle for power. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Clan, researchers working for the US government have achieved a technological breakthrough. The War on Terror is about to go transdimensional.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Alternate History, Audiobook, Science Fiction Fantasy

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2009

About the author

Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy.

Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams and Richard Morgan.

SF Encyclopedia: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_...

Tor: http://us.macmillan.com/author/charle...

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating: 4.5* of five

The latest of "The Merchant Princes" series, book five in fact, is a wonderful deepening of a chain of alternate worlds that resemble the mundane one you and I live in more, or less, depending on which strand of his story Stross is highlighting at any given moment.

The basic premise of all alternate history is to take off from the world the reader knows at a point he or she can get revved up about. In the US, that most often means alternate outcomes of the American Civil War, 1861-1865; I'd hesitate to speculate about other countries, but I've seen a LOT of Bonaparte-wins stuff in French. In a way, this area of fiction allows readers to fulfill fantasies of what the world Could and Should be like.

What I most like about this series of books is that Stross takes off from multiple departure points, and some so subtly that most all readers will slide right past the references that let you know you're down the rabbit hole until sucker-punched with the difference. Stross does that in this book, and he does it well, if a sucker-punch can be done well. A nagging not-quite-rightness from previous books gets brought up full force, and it's a game-changer for the series. Well done, Sir Charles.

Now, there is a downside to every artistic choice...since there are multiple alternate worlds, each with its own issues and problems to work out on these pages, the focus tends to be a bit blurry. The constraints of having the series POV character physically move among the alternate realities limits Stross's forward momentum in her story, and can feel as though the alternates are getting short shrift. I'd have to say, though, that the sensation of wanting more of all the threads is a good sign that Stross is a capable storyteller operating at full throttle.

This entry in the series will repay your time spent reading it. Don't start here, though...start with book one, The Family Trade. It's high-quality thinking, and reading.

Oh, and George Bush gets blown up by a nuke. (That's the extra half-star!)

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

About as subtle as my preschooler's _Blue's Clues_ shows.

The fifth book in (hopefully only) a six book series, I'm sadly hooked enough on the storyline to want to know what happens.

I've read some of Stross' technology-based and futuristic stories, and they are wonderful. I have no idea what went wrong with these books, but I strongly encourage you not to start the _Merchant Princes_ series.

[Bruce · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stross' Merchant Prince saga continues to go off the rails. Too many characters and a confusing story prevented me from really enjoying this.

[Benjamin Uke · Rating 4 out of 5]

5th book in the series Miriam Beckstein finds herself deeper in the web of interdimensional politics and warfare. A splinter group of her family (relatives, amirite?) steals nuclear weapons and attempts to deploy them across parallel worlds, with tensions raising to the boiling point.
She's also carrying the heir to the throne.

3.5/5
Fast-paced, tightly plotted it blurs the line between science fiction and political thriller and continues the high-concept exploration of economic disparity, black-market trade, and cross-world espionage. It sharply critiques modern capitalism by playing it out in alternate timelines.
Miriam's evolution—reluctant idealist to pragmatic realist—anchors the chaos, and every choice has a cost. The question is whether you pay it in gold, blood, or freedom.

Intense, cynical, and politically charged. Combines speculative sci-fi with espionage thriller. My only major criticism is the lack of emotional depth, and complexity of the charcters.

[Baal Of · Rating 3 out of 5]

200 hundred pages into this book, I was just about ready to give it 2 stars and be done, but then I kept plugging away, and found just enough to keep my interest up. I'm sill not happy with how the next character, Miriam, has been manipulated, and also, I hate stories that revolve around pregnancy. This one doesn't commit that sin, but it does represent a major continuing plot point. However, by the time Stross got around to talking about how knot theory wove into the idea of travel into other worlds, he had my attention again. More of that please. I also liked the powerpoint presentation/recap of how screwed the family is that was given by Miriam, excuse me, Helge, because it really helped me straighten out the factions in my mind again. Ironic that, since powerpoint presentations can be so loathsome in the real world. For this series, my enjoyment is sharply curtailed since I don't really like political thrillers. I appreciate a well done backdrop of politics in a story, that provides gravitas, but not when it because the primary or major focus. To Stross's credit, he's writing a style of story that isn't generally to my taste, and yet he manages to throw in just enough to keep going.

[H. R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable continuation of Stross's 'Family' series, recommended if you have read the previous novels in the series, but he is not at the top of his game with this novel. It could be tighter, some of the dialog drifts, for me it became difficult to keep all the character associations clear (Stross should post a 'dramatis persone' at the front of his next in the series). Finally a well-intended warning to Stross that he is showing the initial symptoms of 'Turtledoveitis', i.e. Turtledove at his best (e.g. Guns of the South) does not serialize his concepts as a marketing event, at his worse he does and the result are some series that are ever more ponderous, searching for the light at the end of the serialization tunnel...

[Jerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very disappointed by this book. It did very little to further develop any of the characters. It was so fragmented and lacking details that it didn't seem much really happened. My biggest disappointment was that it tied the series to the past executive administration in the US making the book tied to the present. I think that this was a really bad idea since it destroys the believability of the fantasy.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surprisingly dull and uneventful compared to Stross's other works. Plus, it's clearly intended to have a least one more sequel, allowing Stross to spread too little material over too many pages.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

How can the intensity just continue to build like this?! Anyway, yeah, another cliffhanger, so make sure you have the next book on hand.

[Debra Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of pages with not much happening.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never mind that; I want a copy of book 6. Now!
Those back packable nukes we heard about? They're still around and there are factions in the Clan and that Family Trade Organisation the US government (well, a department of the US government) set up to deal with the Clan is really wanting to deal with the Clan and Mike Fleming, the agent who got caught in a man trap outside the Summer Palace, suffers with a broken leg all through this book and Miriam has discovered what happened to herself back in Book 3 and is trying to regain some control over her life and the whole thing just gallops along like a panicked horse. This is economic science fiction?
I had never met the word "quorate" before, as in a meeting with a quorum attending, but it is perfectly logical, and apparently British usage, so alright, I guess. While the terminology with the medievalists sounds right in these books (although once someone is crowned then they stop being duke or prince and are king from then on I thought) the majority voice is USian so a definite British usage is comforting. I've never been comfortable with secret knowledge, especially knowledge in the hands of people who are able to do something physical with it. This series just confirms me in that feeling.
The characters are vivid and I find myself caring about Mike Fleming, Duke Angbard, Ladies Brilliana and Olga and others we only meet briefly. This is a wonderful series and I'm going to be sorry when I get to the end. I missed Book 3 but they're holding a copy at the library for me. I thought it wouldn't matter because the essentials are referred to in this one but no, I want to read the details. My husband won't read Book 4 until he's read #3 so you can see it's becoming obsessive around here.

[FelixTheMonarchist · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mostly good would have given 5 stars if the author wouldn't have gone into a political rant about having a right to abortion. And abortion is murder and the whole thing might have just been maybe 5% of the book but promoting baby murder is never OK.

[Kati · Rating 1 out of 5]

Siin on dialoog ja täitematerjal juba nii halb, et võtab oigama. Ärge nähke vaeva. Ma jätan lõdvalt pooleli.

[Cate · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm ready for this series to be over. He has to spend so much time each book reaquainting us with all the characters and reminding us again and again of the complicated situations. All I can say is if he doesn't do a line by line reveal in the last book I will be severely pissed off. I hate these bits of dialogue he writes, which are very true to the way people talk, but leave so much unsaid that it's hard to keep track of who's speaking, let alone what's going on. The ideas in this series are interesting and they make me think...and I want to think about economics and numclear warfare not concentrate on who ven Hajalmer is or keep track of made up acronyms in a pseudo-US government. And about that Tom Clancy-style that keeps infringing on my fantasy novel...yeah I can do without that. I don't care what sort of guns they're using and I don't know the difference between them. Big guns, automatic weapons, but I don't need the specs.

[Cale · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may have given this an extra half star just because it finally gets Miriam back to be at least somewhat proactive. She's still the center of a maelstrom of activity as a couple major plot threads get resolved (one that made a large part of the previous book kind of pointless, but oh well) and all the other plot threads start tying themselves together. A couple of the plot pieces get short shrift (poor Paulette gets one brief scene, and the entire New Britain storyline has major ramifications but minor coverage), but the main plot threads have more than enough to keep the book busy. The conflict between the Hochsprache and Federal Government heats up (in some ways literally). The last dozen pages have several major surprises, such that I want to pick up the next book as soon as possible. On its own, I can't say I'll remember the events of this book on their own, but as part of the overarching story, it is a fundamental and interesting piece.

[Alan Norrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is hard going at times. The politics of the early 2000s seems out of place in a fantasy novel. Most of it seems to be the author's own fantasies and this dates very fast. It would be good if the book had concentrated on Huw, Hulius and Elena because these characters seemed fresh and interesting. Erasmus's storyline in New Britain was really boring and the other characters are getting very tired. Miriam/Helge's battle learning hochsprache is really annoying. Even peasant maids can learn English but she whinges constantly. Too many bossy knowall women and not enough story. I keep hoping Helge will be assassinated. Maybe Mike can do that. I have started the next book. Sigh!

[Joe Santoro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a big fan of the first couple books in this series (and Charles Stross in general), but this one was a little much for me. There are now 4 separate factions to keep track of, on 3 worlds, and the promise of more... things get confusing, and not alot of time is spent on any one character.

Add the fact that Stross deicides to use our REAL former political leaders (which was really jarring, to me) and this one fell flat.

And the ending... Oy! I HATE it went books don't end properly.

[David Wade · Rating 2 out of 5]

A political rant disguised as alternate history/multiverse scifi. The earlier books in this series ranged from fair to very good. Stross' politicized self-righteous, and personal anger at the Bush Administration grafts itself into the storyline, cheapening the series and ultimately making it feel dated. The prose also becomes more tired, suggesting that Stross was running up against deadlines and seized upon his worldview for inspiration as a kind of default. A terrible waste of a promising series.

[Leonardo Etcheto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now the nukes show up. They confirm there are six missing. One is found in Boston and sent back to Medieval world where it zaps the bad guy from the previous book. So the new bad guy is of course the government of the united states who basically stop at nothing for oil. Ho hum, pretty tired trope, but book was written when W was president and so it goes. I am always amused when people imagine these huge secret conspiracies in the government. They can't keep anything secret, and the theft is not some clever and secretive plan, it is basic crony capitalism where you write the rules to help your friends and then they give you a nice cushy job. Or to your kid or your wife. There is only one solution - small goverment.
That lesson is shown throughout this series of books where all the goverments are basically all powerful and as result mistreat their citizens.
The other bad guy is the venal doctor whose status has been degraded so he sells everyone out. The world walker breeding program is pretty clever actually, but the US goverment fixes the problem the old fashioned way IQ and money and you have a world walker machine. Lots of cheating, backstabbing, self justifying and craziness. The thin duke is killed by a clever bit of forcing him to worldwalk which gives him a stroke, then suffocating him with a pillow then pretend to try to revive him.
Good fun as the crazy train keeps rolling. It ends with a carbomb incredibly enough.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stross goes hard after the Bush-Cheney administration (aka Boy Wonder and Daddy Warbucks), even naming several cabinet ministers. I'm reading it exactly 20 years after it takes place so some of the concerns seem rather quaint at this point, but it's still interesting to see the juxtaposition of the politics in three different worlds.

Speaking of politics, there's a lot of it. In the real world (war on terror, war on drugs, war for oil, etc.), in a revolutionary coup, and in a civil war. There are meeting minutes and transcripts of bugged conversations. There's even a PowerPoint presentation! There are shadowy government agencies running amok, aristocracies, monarchies, and extra-dimensional narco-terrorists wielding a trans-dimensional siege engine.

Jesus (aka god on a stick), there's a lot going on! The book starts right after a cliffhanger and ends on another one. I'd normally deduct a star for such obnoxiousness, but thankfully I'm able to read them back-to-back so it feels more like one long story rather than 6 partial and interrupted ones. It would have been better to publish in as a single volume, without the filler and recaps that interrupt the flow. As a stand-alone story this one isn't great, but in the context of the larger series it's fantastic, setting up for what will hopefully be a fabulous conclusion.

[Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The weird publishing thing where these novels had to be split means the odd numbers tend to end on cliff hangers even more than usual. I'm so taken with Stross's science fiction work that it pains me to give him less than four stars for anything. But he's writing with the left hand here. The merchant princes series hinges on an alternate worlds frame and our heroine surfs between them. In ours, she's an investigative journalist. In another (in this installment), she's carrying the heir to the throne. In a third she's a brilliant entrepreneur bringing tech from her world to an America in class and political revolt against its British overlords. Or, to put it differently, Stross gets to cross alternative history with sci fi. He's got long form as an inveterate hybridizer in much of his writing, and if I register mild disappointment here, it's because I think Stross manages this so much more effectively in other series. Stross is also a bit of a brainbox, so this particular set of novels deliberately tries to think about issues of modernizing and development. As usual, his writing feels a little prescient given later world historical developments.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stross, Charles. The Revolution Business. Merchant Princes No. 5. Tor, 2009.
As readers of this series know, and I would not recommend starting your reading of it with this volume, a family called the Clan has a recessive gene that allows them to walk between alternate timelines under certain conditions. The family straddles the middle ages and the atomic age, which turns out to be a very dangerous thing for all concerned. Stross uses the storyline of this novel to comment in a sly way on our various wars on drugs and terror and suggests that in a nuclear age, even little wars can lead to cataclysm. Merchant princes continues, on rereading, to be one of my favorite science fiction series of all time.

[Woolstar · Rating 4 out of 5]

While our hero tries to figure out how to rescue her sanity, chart a new course for her life, and deal with the future that's been set in motion; the US takes action, but not with the outcome they're going for. Lots of trial and error around how world walking really works, and the principle that 2 is a very strange number is applied (see the The Gods Themselves).

[Lagarto · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd give this one 3.5 stars if I could, but the system demands less precision. This book is not as good as volume 4 in the series, but far better than book 3 - so a 3 star rating is what it is.

This volume goes mainly into the politics and angles of various systems, and what it takes to implement a new system in the ashes of an old one. Everyone is damaged after a revolution, and this well displays how the strongest survivors attempt to solidify their power and get supporters in line, while subjugating their vanquished foes.

[Tom Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! Charles Stross really hates Dick Cheney. This book continues the Merchant Princes story. It's a page turner, and while many reviews I saw call this series predictable, I didn't find it to be. It's fun. It's a page turner. I'm burning through each of these books in 2-3 days. Good times. Now on to the last one to see how this thing ends. It' feels like he has a lot of balls in the air. I'm curious if he will catch them all.

[Shhhhh Ahhhhh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable. Especially the revelations regarding the other worlds and the necessary implications (perfect dentistry was a GREAT universe artifact). I'm excited for reading the last book that bridges this series with Dark State/ Empire Games BUT, given what I already know after having read those books, I'm supremely disappointed that we haven't even seen a hint of the 'big bad' yet, despite having something like 4 books worth of evidence of their existence. It's unnerving.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is between 3 and 4 stars for me. Better than the previous book, but the complaints other readers have had are accurate. The MC remains tiring and implausible, a woman viewed from man's POV. Also, the politics of it feels incredibly dated, like 9/11 is the worst thing you can imagine, and the Bush II administration is the most corrupt ever. In 2022, we've seen worse.

On the positive side, the plot is a damn good hook, and it's hard not to care how it turns out.

[Shiftless McKenney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thankfully short but this felt like one huge stalling point in the story. One discovery is made which is then explained then explained again then explained again while the rest is redundant politics. Overall building up the story but that was the entire book. Still, looking forward to diving into the next book as so far this series has been fairly good.

[Mark Edlund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Economic science fiction - Stross continues his Merchant Princes series with a book that really accelerates the hostilities between our Earth and the parallel Gruenmarkt. Miriam gets an very unexpected and unwanted promotion. The ending is sobering.
No pharmacy references.
Canadian references - brief mention of Ontario and Quebec; character talks about escaping to Canada.

[Jenny Trick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be a little easier to follow along now that I’m pretty familiar with the different parties and characters. There were still a lot of things that didn’t really make sense to me though and I found that the most interesting things tended to be glossed over/rushed. This book also ended in the middle of action which I find annoying.