I was under the impression that this was a science fiction book set in the far future, with a family that controlled merchant interests across a far-flung, loosely-connected human civilization. I was completely off the mark on that … and I couldn’t be happier. The word for this book, I think, is romp. Specifically, it’s a low-tech/hi-fi political and corporate intrigue and espionage romp. I love heist movies. I live for that moment where the protagonist gets a bunch of people together and says, “Let’s rob a bank.” The Family Trade isń’t a heist novel, but it has that same vibe. The protagonist, Miriam Beckstein, gets sick of being a pawn in other people’s plans—so she forms an alliance of her own and decides to upset every other gambit in play. My kind of heroine.I suppose I should backtrack and explain one essential plot point. Miriam is adopted. It thus follows, by the laws of Fictional Universes, that she is the Long Lost Something-or-other (TVTropes)—the last of her kind, or in this case, long lost daughter of an inter-universal mob. She’s a high-ranking heir in one of the six families of a Clan from a parallel dimension, and believe me, the bizarre starts there. With a medieval, pre-industrial culture rooted in Scandinavian-style language and mythology, the Clan and its world is backwards compared to our Earth. Members of Clan families have the intrinsic ability to walk between the two worlds, and bring anything they can carry along with them. This allows the Clan to operate a very limited import/export trade. And now that everyone knows Miriam exists, she is a rogue chess piece on the playing board. No one wants that.Charles Stross doesn’t always wow me. I’ve liked almost all of his books so far, but it’s safe to say that only Palimpsest looms large in my mind (though I have a soft spot for Singularity Sky as well). As a thinker, he gets it when it comes to theorizing and philosophizing about humanity’s futures. And as a tech guy, he knows how to make with the sexy science talk. But his narratives have seldom managed to grab me and make me go whoa.The Family Trade changes that for me. As I’ve read more of Stross’ work, particularly Rule 34, his skill at planning the arc of a story has become increasingly apparent. It’s even more visible here, where there are tantalizing hints at this vast new parallel world and society—as well as dark secrets even the Clan doesn’t know. Discovering all this along with Miriam is great fun, and the fact that she refuses to submit and just play along makes it all the more entertaining. Stross knows where subterfuge and subtlety is necessary and when the shit should hit the fan.Miriam’s problems start almost immediately. She works for a magazine, and she discovers a criminal conspiracy of which the magazine’s parent company is a part. She realizes this too late and gets fired (and threatened). And if her day had stopped there, it would have sucked, but she could have moved on. Instead she pays a visit to her mother, retrieves a locket that was found on the body of her biological mother, and ends up sitting in her desk chair in the middle of a forest. Welcome to a parallel universe, Miriam. You just got more problems.And her reaction is the reaction of a normal human being: she freaks out. Then her journalist instincts and training kick in, and she starts to think about how to document. She tries to replicate her results. She brings in outside help—a friend—and tries it again. Miriam’s methodical approach lands her in more trouble, yes, but it keeps an otherwise slow start to this story from feeling dull and lackadaisical. Instead, we’re treated to watching Miriam try to figure it out before the other shoe—which we know is there—drops.What really surprised me, however, is how much I liked Roland and Olga. Stross really pulled a fast bait-and-switch, because our first glimpses of them are not in favourable lights. Roland shows up and sounds like a whiney brat who doesn’t get to play with the best toys. Olga sounds like, as Miriam herself describes her, an airhead ditz. Eventually we get to know them better, and while Roland is still a bit of an oaf, he has a three-dimensional personality and a good brain of his own. (I just wish the whole romance aspect didn’t feel so forced!) But Olga … I love Olga. She is a total paradox: raised in this backward world and never allowed to visit ours, she has very strict ideas about station and etiquette and comportment. She does seem like an airhead—harmless 15th-century nobility. And then she turns, and you can see the steel in her. She’s not quite a spymistress yet, but with a few more decades of practice … I have high hopes for her.The other side of The Family Trade is the fusion of corporate espionage with royal backstabbing politics—a match made in some kind of writer heaven. As with Rule 34, much of the jargon Stross employs here goes over my head—I can grok “hostile takeover” and not much more. I’m a mathematician, but the moment financies or economics get involved, I start looking for the exit sign. My inability to understand the intricacies of these plots, however, didn’t much reduce my enjoyment of watching Miriam, Roland, Angbard, et al do their plotting. I just went along for the ride, and I’m glad I did.These sort of parallel world, mixture of modern and medieval fantasy novels don’t always turn out well. (Case in point: The Fionavar Tapestry.) I was expecting something good from Stross, but instead I got something even better—probably the best Stross novel I’ve read since Palimpsest and Singularity Sky. Maybe it’s because it’s just so different from the science fiction I’m accustomed to seeing from him—the fantasy feels fresh but still very comfortable. If you were hoping for another nanotechnology-laden dream from a master of posthumanism, then this is not going to be it (I honestly don’t understand why I thought this was science fiction). But putting that expectation aside, The Family Trade is by all measures very satisfying.My reviews of The Merchant Princes series:The Hidden Family → (forthcoming)
The Family Trade is atrocious. It remains to date the worst book I've ever read.Nothing is resolved, or even close. This isn't a case of a few loose ends, this is a case of the author was as annoyed as I was with the plot and characters and couldn't be bothered to finish the rest of this disaster. The major story Miriam was investigating and that the novel starts off with? We never hear about it again after Paulette assures Miriam she's got backup files if they want to keep pursuing the story as freelancers. The romantic interest, Roland, is completely incidental, someone you could write a full plot summary without mentioning. He's some distant second cousin of Miriam, has been through schooling in the "real world" and like her, longs to change things in the Clan. Initially, she sleeps with him more or less to rebel against the Clan head, her uncle, and then suddenly both she and Roland are going on about how they're madly in love. If you're confused, well, that's only because it makes no sense at all.Things in the world are meant to be medieval European, but they smuggle things over from our world, like televisions and cell phones. I can't for the life of me figure out how a tv would work, though. How do they generate the electricity to run the thing? Did they smuggle an electrician with it? And why, if they're open to the idea of modern conveniences like this, do they not wear more comfortable clothes, instead of insisting on elaborate dresses with corsets that take three hours to put on?The writing itself is awful. I can't count the number of times I read a phrase that made me stop and silently whimper to myself. Allow me to share a few, since I can't simply be content to suffer alone. Some of my personal favourites are from what's meant to be an intimate scene between Miriam and Roland. I swear, I haven't altered a thing in these sentences:"He stroked her flank silently.""She felt his nod: It sent a shiver through her spine.""She felt lips touch the top of her spine."Now that's a sexy scene.Even the characters were poorly handled. Not a single one of them was particularly likeable, and none of them were convincingly consistent in their personality. Paulette is introduced as an incredibly smart, slightly naive woman, never having considered that one of the companies involved in the money-laundering scheme she and Miriam uncovered was something her boss worked with. Later, when the locket's abilities are revealed, Paulette is the one who realizes the implications something like that could have to someone criminally minded, and Miriam is horrified at the possibilities.There really is nothing redeemable about this book. It took me twice as long as it should have to get through this sludge, because I was just slogging through it. Only the thought of putting up a review and preventing others from making the same horrible mistake as me and picking up this book got me through it.I suppose there is one way it could have been worse: I could have paid for this thing instead of taking it out of the library. At least now I can give it back and let the healing start.
What do You think about The Family Trade (2005)?
This is the first book in a trilogy and the premise is interesting. The main character is the long lost relative of a powerful family that can travel between two worlds. She doesn't know anything of these relatives or her special abilities until her adopted mother gives her a locket found on the body of her murdered mother and she opens it and finds herself somewhere else. Unfortunately the dialog is awkward and unnatural. The characters display emotion through their conversation that seem inappropriate to the circumstances or their relationships to the people they are talking with. If there was no dialog, this would be a better book which is saying a lot for me since I appreciate dialog more than anything in a book. I'm reading the next book to see if the author's editor does a better job and because I already have it borrowed from the library.
—Elizabeth
Takes the well-worn trope of parallel worlds and draws out its political and economic implications. The worldbuilding is very good. The novel itself is rather clunkily written and I found myself skimming chunks of it. But I enjoyed it. I'm reminded of a jokey article by Paul Krugman called "The Theory of Interstellar Trade," which deals with the interest rates on goods travelling near the speed of light. Stross doesn't go into whether interdimensional interest parity will hold in his setting, since one of the two worlds is medieval and lacks capital markets. It's mostly development, technology transfers, etc. But I bet there's all kinds of arbitrage waiting in the sequels. It also occurred to me that while I enjoy Paul Krugman's writing, I'm glad he's never attempted to write a sex scene. To my knowledge.
—Eliot St. John
I have to admit that I picked this up for the recommendation of "in the tradition of Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber"... and if by "in the tradition of" you mean "main character discovers magical family in a land that's not earth but they can travel between and also everyone in the family hates each other"... then yes, it is in the tradition of the Amber series. However, the main character in this book is much less motivated than Zelazny's Corwin, and also much sluttier. And I say that being completely fine with sex in literature -- but the sex this character had seemed hastily thrown in as an afterthought, and not inherent to the storyline. Unless the storyline in future books is going to show how her having a man will be what solves all the world's ills, and not her innate talent in seemingly everything she has ever tried to do. However, I'll probably never know. While I definitely want to read more of this author, who has come highly recommended to me, I doubt I'll finish this series. None of the characters had anything about them that made me want to know more, which makes me sad in an author compared to Zelazny. Hopefully other books by this author will thrill me more.
—Lorena
