Empire Games

November 14, 2016
The multiverse teeters on the edge of a new cold war in this overly long and complicated novel, a continuation of Stross’s popular Merchant Princes series. In 2020, Rita Douglas, an aimless 20-something, is pulled into a plot by the Department of Homeland Security. Her mother—who placed her for adoption when she was a baby—is Miriam Beckstein, a world-walker who can pass into other timelines. Newly developed tech can awaken Rita’s world-walking abilities, and DHS recruits her as a spy. Meanwhile, in a different timeline, Miriam and other world-walkers are embedded in the government of the Commonwealth, emancipated from the British Empire in 2003. Both Rita and Miriam are forced to navigate the apparatuses of their governments: the bloated bureaucracy of the American panopticon, and the scheming intrigues of post-revolution power players. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Miriam and Rita must try to negotiate peace or prepare for an interdimensional war. Readers new to Stross’s saga might have unanswered questions, but this novel stands on its own. Stross roots his alternate histories and futures in discussions of privacy, democracy, and technology. These big themes (fun as they are) tend to overpower the small details, and the characters and relationships feel underdeveloped.

November 15, 2016
Espionage and Cold War paranoia prevail as near-future governments in alternate timelines test one another's defenses and capabilities in this opening installment of a science-fiction trilogy and sequel to the six-volume Merchant Princes series (The Trade of Queens, 2010, etc.)The previous series focused on trade, smuggling, and the power politics of godfather-style families across alternate timelines. Here the USA (not ours, but close) of timeline No. 2 has become a hypertrophied military-police/surveillance/espionage state ("President Rumsfeld" tells you all you need to know). In the less technologically advanced timeline No. 3, the revolutionary North American Commonwealth is locked in a nuclear standoff with the vast French empire. Because of a nuclear attack that destroyed Washington (and for other, even more alarming, reasons), the USA desperately wants to learn what's happening there. A committee headed by generic cold warrior Col. Smith recruits people, called world-walkers, who possess the ability to cross between timelines in latent form, intending to awaken their abilities and send them into timeline No. 3 as spies. The guinea pig is Rita Douglas, estranged daughter (though it's hugely more involved than that) of Miriam Beckstein, the prime mover of the prior series who, fearing the USA's power, now guides the rapid technological development of the Commonwealth. This novel and its prequels are, for Stross, almost defiantly orthodox in structure (see the narrative pyrotechnics of Rule 34, for instance) and stately in development. Still, his writing is as complex and subtle as ever, so series newcomers may well need to absorb the first 200 pages before the sociological and political implications fully emerge. Which viewpoint readers identify with, and there's plenty of scope for ambiguity, will depend mostly on what they themselves bring along. An absorbing but ultimately underwhelming yarn that patiently builds on existing foundations without venturing a conclusion or even a cliffhanger.

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December 1, 2016

In 2003, the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire. Now, 17 years later, the North American Commonwealth seeks to spread democracy throughout the world. The Ministry of Intertemporal Research and Intelligence is an espionage agency that has helped the Commonwealth spearhead its development and power in this time line. That's right: it's a time-traveling agency. Ministry head Miriam Burgeson knows that eventually their dimension will be crossed (as she and her crew did in the past), and the Americans will arrive. In another parallel universe, Miriam's daughter, Rita--abandoned at birth by her on-the-run parent--has been recruited by the United States to look for these "world walkers" and stop them from threatening its national security. Yet, from the beginning, it is obvious that Rita is not getting the entire truth from her handlers. With two paratime agencies trying to avoid confrontation, the stage is being set for a battle between a pair of nuclear powers--and an estranged mother and daughter are caught in the middle. VERDICT With this series launch, Stross draws on the world of his "Merchant Princes" series and its paratime travelers. Contemporary power plays mixed with historical notes make for an entertaining, action-filled start to this trilogy.--KC

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2016
Stross returns to the world of his Merchant Princes series, his homage to the Amber series by Roger Zelazny. Reading more like a high-tech thriller than a fantasy about walking between worlds in a multiverse, this first of three alternate histories focuses on Miriam's estranged daughter, Rita. Rita's been left behind in the United States most similar to our own world but having been galvanized by a nuclear attack on Washington, D.C., into a place where cameras see almost everything going on. The Department of Homeland Security targets Rita as a carrier of the gene that allows one to jaunt from one world to anotherin fact, they train her to become an agent to spy on the Clan faction responsible for the nuclear attack. Stross handles the story well enough that you don't need to have read the previous six books. Of course, those who have will be overjoyed to renew their acquaintance with Miriam and her associates, who are desperately trying to avert a political disaster in their own world while preparing for the inevitable collision about to take place with Rita's world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)