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The Family Trade (Merchant Princes)

The Family Trade (Merchant Princes)

by Charles Stross (Author)

  • Used

    Mass Market Paperback 2005

    $6.75
Synopsis

Miriam Beckstein is happy in her life as a successful reporter. When she gets iron-clad evidence of a money-laundering scheme, Miriam thinks she's found the story of the year. But when she takes it to her editor, she's fired on the spot and gets a death threat from the criminals she's uncovered. Before the day is over, she's received a locket left by the mother she never knew - the mother who was murdered when Miriam was an infant. The knot work pattern within has a hypnotic effect on her. Before she knows it, she's transported herself to a parallel Earth, a world where knights on horseback chase their prey with automatic weapons and where her true family is in charge. The six families of the Clan rule the kingdom of Gruinmarkt from behind the scenes. These nobles and criminal conspirators use their exclusive inherited power to walk between the worlds and grow rich. Miriam's unexpected return will supercede the claims of other clan members to her mother's fortune and power, and whoever killed her mother will be happy to see her dead, too. But Miriam is no one's pawn, and is determined to conquer her new home on her own terms.

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More Information

Format: Mass Market Paperback
 Pages: 320
 Edition: New
 Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 23 May 2005
ISBN 10: 0765348217
ISBN 13: 9780765348210

Media Reviews
The Family Trade blows away any preconceptions with the introductory paragraph, and keeps the surprises coming to the very end. Fortunately, this is just the first book in what promises to be a very entertaining and tantalizing series. . . . Stross has created a world readers can believe in and a woman they will root for. She's tough, but compassionate. Brave, but not foolhardy. . . . Fantasy fans are going to eat this series up. With Stross's strong plotting and wonderful mingling of cultures, The Family Trade is poised to be a modern classic. Its fast, almost breathless, pace creates a rip current that submerges the reader in a world unlike any other and completely irresistible. - Black Gate
Charles Stross's The Family Trade is an inventive, irreverent, and delightful romp into an alternate world where business is simultaneously low and high tech, and where romance, murder, marriage, and business are hopelessly intertwined -- and deadly. -L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
The Family Trade is one of those rare delights--a book that is fun, intelligently written, and which leaves a reader breathlessly wondering what will happen next. Readers Beware: Stross weaves a tale that continually builds to an engrossing climax. Once you get into this, you'll find yourself hooked. -David Farland
The Family Trade show that Charles Stross is no longer a beginner to watch, but a star to watch. -Mike Resnick
At last, a story in which a character from our world is plunged into another, and doesn't act like a complete idiot. Miriam Beckstein is sharp-witted enough not to waste time trying to pretend that she can avoid the dilemmas that have been forced on her, while being human enough to lether emotions guide her into risky territory.
Stross not only creates an alternate world that is fascinating and original, he even does the unheard of, for a fantasist: His depiction of our world is deep and real. Many a fantasist is able to create, or at least borrow from Tolkien, a reasonably interesting milieu in which the characters can cavort, but when they try their hand at showing something from the real world, like, in this case, the society of high finance, they embarrass themselves by revealing how little they know.
No such problem with Stross. He knows this world backward and forward, and seems to have thought of everything. His characters behave in ways that make sense. They know all the things they should know, and don't know the things they shouldn't. The result is that we readers can trust this author completely, dive into this story and let it carry us wherever the current flows.
Not to mention the fact that it's simply a great adventure, full of danger, of plots within plots, of forbidden love and political murder. Science fiction is in good hands with Charles Stross here to lead the new generation. -Orson Scott Card
Quirky, original, and entertaining. The Family Trade could be the Godfather of all fantasy novels. -Kevin J. Anderson
Author Bio

Charles Stross is the author of the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry series, and several stand-alone novels including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn's Children. Born in Leeds, England, in 1964, Stross studied in London and Bradford, earning degrees in pharmacy and computer science. Over the next decade and a half he worked as a pharmacist, a technical writer, a software engineer, and eventually as a prolific journalist covering the IT industry. His short fiction began attracting wide attention in the late 1990s; his first novel, Singularity Sky, appeared in 2003. He has subsequently won the Hugo Award twice. He lives with his wife in Edinburgh, Scotland, in a flat that is slightly older than the state of Texas.