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. Well we certainly answered a lot of questions - like whether this is meant to be events set in reality but hidden from the reader, or whether we're looking at some sort of alternate history - cleared that one up with an exclamation point on the end! But for a book that claims to be the final book in the series, if not (hint hint) the final book he will write about the world, too much is left up in the air at the end. What happens to Mirriam? What happens to the survivors of Gruinmarkt? What happens to the new government and our friends in New Britain? For goodness' sake; in a series where we clearly and deliberately don't have a single black-hat baddie, we don't really even know what happened to our least favorite puppy-kicker, the "good" doctor! Even the folks for whom we do get resolution have a disquieting tendency to slip away offstage; we miss the duel and only get Fortinbras turning up at the end to count the corpses.I still liked the series as a whole quite a lot, but I didn't feel that it was wrapped up sufficiently for something I'd invested 6 books on.
What do You think about The Revolution Business (2009)?
I like this series, though wish that he'd stayed w/ economic "revolution" rather than military
—Debbie
This series gets more intricate and better with each book. Good work Stross.
—Skittlemyrainboww
weaker than the others but I still enjoyed the series.
—nakz
