So I’m a Charlie Stross fan. If you enjoy stories of smart characters thrown off stride by mystifying, life-changing impossible events then you’ll enjoy The Hidden Family, the second volume of The Merchant Princes series (after The Family Trade). As usual I’d have preferred to not find or at least start the series until all of it was released but since that won’t be for several years or more that wasn’t really an option (book 3 comes out in a month or so).
Miriam Beckstein, a/k/a Lady Helge Thorold-Hjorth, has firmed up her plans to make her life more secure and in doing so bring the technology and freedoms of our world to the one she was born (and elsewhere) with her trio of female assistants and support from the man she loves. Not an easy goal with multiple factions arrayed in opposition and others wanting to use her to subvert The Clan itself but Mom has raised Miriam right. Stross tosses in a couple of neat surprises when several characters’ true identities are revealed and he doesn’t ignore the possibilities available by throwing in some realities from our world too.
Being an early element of what will clearly be much more than a trilogy, perhaps seven to ten books in all, Hidden Family resolves only small questions, opens many more and finishes with an old-fashioned cliffhanger or three.
recommended
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