The Trade of Queens

The Merchant Princes #6

by Charles Stross

A dissident faction of the Clan, the alternate universe group of families that has traded covertly with our world for a century or more, have carried nuclear devices between the worlds and exploded them in Washington, DC, killing the President of the United States. Now they will exterminate the rest of the Clan and keep Miriam alive only long enough to bear her child, the heir to the throne of their land in the Gruinmarkt world.

The worst and deepest secret is now behind the horrifying plot is a faction of the US government itself, preparing for a political takeover in the aftermath of disaster. There is no safe place for Miriam and her Clan except, perhaps, in the third alternate world, New Britain--which has just had a revolution and a nuclear incident of its own.

Charles Stross's Merchant Princes series reaches a spectacular climax in this sixth volume. Praised by Nobel laureate Paul Krugman as "great fun," this is state of the art, cutting edge SF grown out of a fantastic premise.

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

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

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 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

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 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!

[Rich · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm a very big fan of Charles Stross, and from the beginning I very much enjoyed this series depicting the struggles of the heroine, Miriam as she came to not only come to grips with the revelation that she had the ability to travel between various worlds, but also that she was heiress to a powerful family in a parallel universe. That's a lot for anyone to try to get a grip on, but add assassination attempts, the family drug dealing business and her trying to build a business empire of her own into the mix, it's a wonder that Stross could hope to keep track of her doings alone. Unfortunately, a multitude of other characters and additional storylines were thrown into the mix, and pretty soon it seemed that Miriam started taking a back seat to the other events unfolding in the story.

It was the storyline focusing on Miriam that kept me coming back to the books, but by the time I finished this final installment, it seemed that she was a minor character in her own story. She wasn't even included in the final pages of the story. It almost seemed that Stross was just tired of the whole series and just decided to nuke the story in order to get it over with and move on to something new.

[Rob · Rating 1 out of 5]

Started out a light-but-punchy series about alternate worlds with a spunky female lead. Ended in some insane gibberish where Donald Rumsfeld becomes President after Dick Cheney nukes Washinton. Really. My Charles Stross fandom edges into anti-fandom..

[Helena Jole · Rating 2 out of 5]

A most unsatisfying conclusion to an overly convoluted and drawn-out series.

The first book (The Family Trade) caught my eye at the library. It wasn't anything like I was expecting, but I enjoyed it (though it was rather heavier on the sex and violence than I generally go for). The first couple of books are okay, and then it all devolves into a big unfocused mess.

Maybe I'm just no good with political subtlety, but when you're so subtle that your reader can't even tell what's going on I think that's a problem.

I had a really hard time keeping all the secondary characters straight. In the fifth book I believe there was a character with the first name Anders, one with the last name Anders, and a couple with a baby called Anders. This book had a Steve and a Stephen, introduced one right after the other, and then later a Stefan. It's just sloppy. And either Dr. Ven Hjalmar had two first names or there was another Ven Hjalmar. The fact that I couldn't tell is just one indication of what's wrong with this series.

I found the repeated intrusion of the author's snarky political opinions annoying. Possibly more so because the author is British. Certainly he's allowed to have an opinion and to write about American politics, but I still found myself bristling.

(Speaking of which, I noticed a few British-isms, like "hired car" and "in hospital," which someone should have caught in proofreading.)

The one thing that really, really bugged me was that, early on in the series, it was mentioned that Miriam had given birth to a baby girl years before and placed her for adoption. Did this ever come up again? No! You don't write a story that revolves around a certain recessive genetic factor, casually mention a character who would be a carrier of said gene, and then do absolutely nothing with her. It reminded me of the Writing Excuses podcast about keeping promises to your readers.

In fact there are quite a few things in the series that could be considered unfulfilled promises. A few things are more-or-less wrapped up by the end of this book, but there are an awful lot of loose ends. I get the impression that Stross just kind of lost interest. Or he let everything get too complicated and it all just got away from him.

I think this series might appeal to fans of Eric Flint's 1632 series. Possibly.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Obscure, convoluted, hard to follow, poorly written. The premise of the first book was interesting, but it all went downhill from there. What started as a fascinating fantasy idea devolved into an apocolyptic morality parable. Stross is a good author, but you wouldn't know it from the Merchant Princes books.

[Baal Of · Rating 3 out of 5]

finally at the end of this series, and it really cranked up like it was going to be something exciting. Nuclear bombs destroying the White House and killing the president, ought to be pretty great. Yet, my attention wandered, as Miriam got sidelined, and other more boring characters to center stage. And the ending with the US carpet bombing the alternate Earth with nukes, while most of the family flee to yet another Earth, but it just fell flat. I guess Stross was trying to say something about the futility of revenge, especially on the scale that the US likes to do. Message received, I guess. I just wish it could have been a better story. This remains my least favorite Stross series.

[Benjamin Uke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sixth and final book in Charles Stross' The Merchant Princes series. It concludes the multiverse-spanning saga of Miriam Beckstein, a journalist-turned-worldwalker caught in the deadly crossfire of political intrigue, interdimensional trade, and nuclear brinkmanship.

So... a breakaway faction of the clan detonated a nuclear warhead in our timeline. Miriam must navigate collapsing alliances, secret power plays, and a looming war that could annihilate multiple timelines. The book blends political thriller, near-future speculation, and hard science fiction.
Because Uncle Sam found out that the US government can travel between different dimensions of the USA.
Coincidentally those dimensions that have oil.

4/5: Bunch of ren-fest reject interdimensional drug-dealers nuked Washington DC.
Comedy.
Gold.
All the while the author handles it while threading in economic theory, nuclear deterrence, and court politics together and still makes it thrilling. This is the kind of high-brow pulpy weirdness that keeps me enjoying the genre. It's a satisfying, if explosive, conclusion to a series that began as a fantasy and ended up a geopolitical techno-thriller across universes.

[Clay Kallam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Charles Stross’ “Trade of Queens” (Tor, $24.99, 304 pages) wraps up the The Merchant Prince, but unfortunately, Stross ran out of gas down the stretch, and the series, which started out brilliantly, limps to the finish line.

It may just be that Stross is burning himself out with his workload, which isn’t limited to just this series. He would probably do himself a favor, and certainly his readers, if he focused less on quantity and more on quality. Still, “Trade of Queens” is a pretty fun read, though trying to remember who’s who is sometimes a burden (it’s easy to get confused as to who’s on whose side, and which faction is out to get the various protagonists).

Readers who’ve been on board since the beginning will definitely want to finish the series, but the decline in quality of the last two (of six) books makes it hard to recommend that newcomers start with “The Clan Corporate” -- the fast start might not make up for the sluggish finish.

[pie · Rating 2 out of 5]

totally unsatisfying ending.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a white-knuckle read right until the very end! Whew. It feels like this series was heavily influenced by the way the world turned after 9/11... Also, willful ignorance and refusing to change/adapt can be extraordinarily dangerous to those around you...

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Debbie Ginsberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun series, though repetitious in parts. Now that I've finished the first six books, I've got to wonder if Stross lives in a world where:

1. Everyone whistles tunelessly.
2. Everyone smiles humorlessly.
3. Everyone is constantly fighting an internal war with their own bile.
4. Everyone always seems like they've might have grown a second head.

[Tom Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stross really hates the Bush administration. It's a good book, but it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered. This volume of the story doesn't focus on characters like past volumes which I thought was the strong point of the series. It does spend a lot of time turning conservatives and members of the Bush administration into cartoon super villains. I really think that if Stross had gone less evil super villain and presented those characters more sympathetically, it could have really been an effective exploration of the morality of using nuclear weapons. Instead, it was too cartoony. Still, it's a page turner. I finished it on one day. I recommend this series.

[Gfl · Rating 1 out of 5]

A promising fantasy series drifted into science fiction wich I could handle. This last book (well, the last before Stross started writing in this series again) jumping the shark and turning into poorly written unlikely political allegory with cardboard characters and Stross' own political beliefs stomping over the plot ... that's not what I paid my money for.

The very last work of Stross's I will ever purchase.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

The series runs out of steam here in the final book. Certainly the wilder fantasies of the anti-Bush/Cheney crowd were satisfied in the last two books and that cheapened the product. This could have been so much better; I was hoping for a stronger female lead (see Weber, Moon, Flint, Drake, Huff, etc.). To call this economics science fiction is a stretch.

[Paul Wakelam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Charles Stross seems to really dislike the USA. In the Laundry Series, demons run the country and in this one they decide to destroy parallel universes .
As other reviewers have noted , he just seems to have got bored.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The series doesn't end so much as it just stops. Probably for the best, given Stross' increasing ranty tone.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked the way this series started. I'm really disappointed in how it wound up.

[Debra Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Im sorry this last in the series was confusing. Start to end. And the ending left so many questions unaswered.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been able to read this series one right after the other so the only mildly annoying part is the need to jump quite a few paragraphs where we're given background - again. I've read series where I didn't have a middle or first volume and have had all sorts of references to people and events I know nothing about and unexplained references are probably more annoying than repeated explanations so I'll barrel along skipping stuff I remember.
The characters are very clear in their motivation to the extent that I would like to stop some of the Americans and open up their heads for a good look to see what makes *them* tick. Whenever I wonder at the view authors so often give of American security types I have only to listen to the day's news. Today we were told that Venezuela should do what the US says *because* the US says so. I wonder if current events have had any influence on Mr. Stross' writing.
There is no surprise about the ending of this book since things have been building to it all along but the completeness of the "retaliation" (who hit first?) is a bit of a shock.
The most recent pair of books is sitting waiting for me and I can hardly wait.

[Paul Weimer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Six books in, the Merchant Princes series has come to an end.

For those of you just joining us, Miriam Beckstein, journalist from Boston, discovered that she really is the scion of a family with a secret--with the aid of special clockwork knots, they can transport themselves between our world, and the primitive feudal world of their birth. They have used this power to amass wealth and power by through the lucrative trade of drug smuggling, using the Gruinmarkt as a way to get around the DEA. Miriam has been married, widowed, discovered a *third* history where a autocratic British empire runs North America and is on the cusp of revolution, and has learned there are more worlds still out there.

Now, things come to a head.

The Clan sends a message to the United States by using their worldwalking powers to explode a few stolen backpack nuclear weapons. This, frankly, leads to no good end, as President Cheney (President Bush is killed by one of the bombs) decides on a murderous course of revenge which is perfected by HIS successor. Cheney's revelation of worldwalking to the world leads to tensions between nations, including...well, that would be telling.

And in the middle of it all, Miriam is just trying to find a place, a world, for herself and her people to survive. The Trade of Queens indeed...

I got the sense, reading this, that Stross felt he wanted to be done with this universe. There is a weariness to the text and to the plot that I didn't detect in earlier volumes. There is some lovely speculation on why the worlds have different amounts of technology, but this speculation is sadly stillborn. The novel also suffers by ending Miriam's plot long before the end of the book, and she does not appear afterwards.

A few glitches and typos (the inconsistent use of code names in and out of public) mar the text a bit as well. It felt unprofessional and sloppy. I know that this is not fair to the writer, but I am responding to the text as much as the talented Mr. Stross.

This is not to say that its all bad. Stross' strong points hold here. His worlds show harsh contrasts and he follows the implications of worldwalking technology and its revelation to its terrible, stark conclusions. Even though I winced at the actions of the U.S. and other nations, I cannot deny that they are anything but extremely plausible. I suspect that if these novels had been written before Sept 11,2001, the tone would have been different, but in the post 9/11 world, things really are different.

Looking back, I am glad to have read the series, but this volume definitely ends it on a bit of a whimper. It doesn't quite fulfill the enormous promise of the first novel. I think Mr. Stross, as talented as he is, still has things to learn about writing a full blown series. I look forward to seeing him try.

[Graham · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the last in The Merchant Princes series, originally 6 books later republished as three larger books encompassing pairs of the originals.

I generally hate series where the individual books have no real endings – or worse still cliffhanger endings. However, I would be prepared to make an exception for this series because for me it was a terrific story that was hard to put down. The story had many threads, but it all revolved around a group of people who had the ability to “world-walk” – switch between parallel worlds that were at different stages of development. I found the concept made a great series, and although I’ve seen negative comments about it, for me it was a terrific read.

BUT – a long series of 6 original books has got to have a great ending, tying up all the threads. As I got to the latter stages of this final book I could see that this was not happening. Instead it finished with many threads unresolved. Moreover – spoiler alert - since it is very relevant to my big complaint, I need to explain that the book ended with a very long and tedious description of the US sending a mass of planes to carry out a carpet bombing with hydrogen bombs of the alternate world. It was a pointless, massive overkill of a mainly peasant population, carried out it seemed – with no real explanation of the rationale – as a fit of pique by an arrogant (recently promoted) US president. And there, in the main, the story just stopped, with no exploration of the consequences, or effect on the protagonists, who were the unfair targets of the bombing but who escaped it, though with negative consequences.

So for me at least, this great series was ruined by lack of a proper ending and a hugely over-the-top climax that almost seemed to be intended mainly to make some political point rather than finish the story. It’s two stars rather than one because of the high quality of the first five books, but don’t read the series unless you don’t mind it having an awful finish.

[Jonathan Lupa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glad I read the series, but it wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be after book 1.

When I read a book, and something happens, I consider that event from the point of view of the characters and the point of view of the author. Why are these Characters doing what they are doing? What is the author thinking? In Stross's books, it seems a lot of things happen for no good reason whatsoever. Events are chronicled that do not follow from the past, nor feed into the future. As such, they are somewhat frustrating to me.

Anyways, at the end of the day, you have a 6 book SF/Fant series which is reasonably close to Amber, which should be enough of a recommendation for those who feel like me about Zelazny. That it doesn't measure up isn't really that surprising; And honestly, Stross brings his own "hard SF" vision to everything he touches. It's probably very hard for him to write a relaxed enjoyable story as he is always tied up in the 'what-if's' which are the hallmark of the good SF writer.

[Michael Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. This series is too long and really went no where. It was a good concept, but should have been one novel instead of 6. If it had, then I would be excited to read the next novel, but not the next series.

That said, Stross is always a good read. These books are written in his most pedestrian style, but that's still pretty good.

[Beth Quittman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read 6 books in this series waiting to find out why I was supposed to care.... only to be confronted with one more cliff-hanger ending and a bunch of characters I still don't care very much about.

[Metagion · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really have to say I'm disappointed with this book. It ended really badly, and wayyyy too 'catastrophic' for me. It seemed like Mr. Stross just gave up and tacked on words for the hell of it. Too much jumping around as well. Too bad; I had liked the other books. This is a skip!

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing end of a series that showed great promise to start.
There are too many loose end left hanging

[Jon]

A friend of mine once commented on a novel, saying in effect "The Dungeon Master is tired and wants to go to bed, so everybody dies". I get a little bit of that feeling after reading Stross' latest - and last - book in the Merchant Princes series. If you haven't been following the series, it's an alternate universe tale. On a planet Earth that physically resembles ours, but in which the industrial revolution never happened, there's a family of people who have the natural ability to "world walk". They focus on a special symbol and their brains take them from their world to ours.


Since none of the geopolitical boundaries in our world exist in the one next door, they're able to make their fortunes mainly by smuggling goods without ever crossing a border checkpoint. In their business, they've developed some interesting ties with organized crime and organized government. As a bit of insurance against one of their employers, who has become the vice president of the U.S., some of their agents have world-walked into secure military facilities, and absconded with some backpack-sized nukes.

Just as the previous novel ended, the Clan was involved in a massive civil war between its progressive and conservative factions, and the conservative faction somehow decided it would be a good idea to demonstrate to the U.s. that they were not to be messed with. As this novel begins, that faction sends three nukes to Washington DC, detonating two of them successfully, destroying the White House and killing the president.

In the meantime, the heroine of the series, Miriam, a woman raised from birth in the U.S., but who is actually a Clan heir and capable of world-walking, is trying to get to a safe place in the midst of the civil war. In earlier novels, she discovered a third alternate Earth, where the Revolutionary War never happened, and the Americas are still ruled mostly by a British king. She had been involved with the resistance movement there, and her contacts are now people in power after a semi-successful modern revolution.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the U.S. government has come up with a technical solution to cross between universes, and the newly sworn in President declares war on the Clan, sending a fleet of bombers across the world boundaries to retaliate for the attack on DC.

Murder, vengeance and mayhem abound, and very few live happily ever after. Stross claims in the forward that he's done with the series, but he may have left the door open a crack for later stories in this alternate universe universe, should his publishers make him an offer he can't refuse. If you've been following this series, you've gotta read it for that sense of completion, but don't expect a great deal of satisfaction at the wrap-up.

[Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I continue to feel as if Stross is writing with the left hand in this series; his better works tend to be the more straightforward sci fi. Once, this volume concluded the merchant princes series, a set of novels about alternate earths, universes that a handful of individuals could traverse at will. Stross used the premise to enact certain theories about the development trap. For some eco-heads, that might be catnip. It never much interested me. The style he largely adopts in these narratives—advancing the main story along multiple threads and in multiple consciousnesses, without much in the way of immediate signals—is not well-suited to the reader (like me) who comes at these in order, but separated sometimes by intervals of a couple of months or more. It leaves me frequently confused about some of the characters (what's the diff between Olga and Brill and which one has the hots for Huw?). Stross does what he can to catch the reader up, but really for best enjoyment I suspect these need to be run through in quick order rather than spaced out over time as I have done. What elevated this putative conclusion to the series was the up-to-the-minute (for 2010) use of real American political figures. It was actually dead funny and Stross's ventriloquism of deadbeats like Cheyney or Rumsfeld is sometimes a little too uncanny (known unknowns indeed). Given the sideways turn our own little universe took half a decade after completion, it seems little surprise that Stross has returned to this series with another trilogy. Given the elevation in energy that being more forthright about importing real world history into this final volume (or so it seemed to me), I am practically salivating at the thought of what he might get up to when he brings the spray tan criminal in chief on stage in the next set. This final volume feels a trifle less suspenseful as most of the main plot strands seem well in hand very early here. That leaves the pleasures to things like close descriptions of saturation atomic bombing or imagining the inane splendors of a Republican bureaucracy run amok. Stross is good at that stuff and for me that's where a lot of the joy lies in this once-final volume. I suspect the next trilogy will be a significant improvement. I might need to just carve out the time to read them in order quickly instead of spacing them out months apart.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book deserves negative stars. One of the worst books I've ever read. I am officially not reading anything else from this author. If you've gotten this far in the series, just go ahead and stop.
I read this book wanting resolutions for several secondary characters since I'd already stopped caring about Miriam/Helga. Only Olga and Hugh get anything like resolution. Most characters, including the presumptive protagonist, are left adrift with no known outcome for the reader.

Over the course of the series, the author lost touch with his heroine's character and had her flapping around all over the place. In this book she finally recovers some of her original character, but too little and too late. Secondary characters like Olga and Mike have long since taken her place. And poor Paulie has been left floundering yet again. With friends like these....

Then you have the problems with science (ex: Did the author research anything about atomic bombs/explosions other than mostly irrelevant minutiae?), how the government in question actually works, and the general convoluted way the story is presented. Is this a pantser at his worst or just bad writing?

On top of all that is the author's obvious disdain for America and the egregious politics that eventually overshadow everything else about the story. Moreover, there's no way the standard disclaimer could cover the author and publisher when highly specific details and actual names are included.

The work is smug and seething with vitriol while also straining the suspension of disbelief to the breaking point; confusing the reader with its awkward plotting, pacing, characters, and interactions; and then leaving far too much unresolved. I have wasted far too many hours on this mess.

So despite a recommendation from Brandon Sanderson, I'm not going near this author again