β Scribed by Charles Stross
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
A bold fantasy in the tradition of Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber,
The Merchant Princes is a sweeping new series from the hottest new
writer in science fiction!
Miriam Beckstein is happy in her life.
She's a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine in Boston, making
good money doing what she loves. When her researcher brings her
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 has
uncovered.
Before the day is over, she's received a locket left
by the mother she never knew-the mother who was murdered when she was an
infant. Within is a knotwork pattern, which 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 world-skipping assassins lurk just on the other side
of reality - a world where her true family runs things.
The six
families of the Clan rule the kingdom of Gruinmarkt from behind the
scenes, a mixture of nobility and criminal conspirators whose power to
walk between the worlds makes them rich in both. Braids of family
loyalty and intermarriage provide a fragile guarantee of peace, but a
recently-ended civil war has left the families shaken and suspicious.
Taken
in by her mother's people, she becomes the star of the story of the
century-as Cinderella without a fairy godmother. As her mother's heir,
Miriam is hailed as the prodigal countess Helge Thorold-Hjorth, and
feted and feasted. Caught up in schemes and plots centuries in the
making, Miriam is surrounded by unlikely allies, forbidden loves, lethal
contraband, and, most dangerous of all, her family. Her 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.
Behind all this lie deeper secrets still, which
threaten everyone and everything she has ever known. Patterns of
deception and interlocking lies, as intricate as the knotwork between
the universes. But Miriam is no one's pawn, and is determined to conquer
her new home on her own terms.
Blending the creativity and humor
of Roger Zelazny, the adventure of H. Beam Piper and Philip Jose
Farmer, and the rigor and scope of a science-fiction writer on the
grandest scale, Charles Stross has set a new standard for fantasy epics.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
### From Publishers Weekly Best known for his Accelerando novels (*Singularity Sky*, etc.) of an ever-speedier techno-Singularity, British author Stross mixes high-tech with medieval trappings in this highly entertaining science fantasy in the "misplaced modern" mode. Reporter Miriam Beckstein, rec
### From Publishers Weekly Best known for his Accelerando novels (_Singularity Sky_ , etc.) of an ever-speedier techno-Singularity, British author Stross mixes high-tech with medieval trappings in this highly entertaining science fantasy in the "misplaced modern" mode. Reporter Miriam Beckstein, re
### Readers unfamiliar with Stross's *Clan Corporate* (2006) and its predecessors should hunt them down before diving into this breakneck fourth Merchant Princes episode. The clan, a Machiavellian trading dynasty whose members can cross among parallel universes, are losing control of their own affai
### From Publishers Weekly Readers unfamiliar with Stross's _Clan Corporate_ (2006) and its predecessors should hunt them down before diving into this breakneck fourth Merchant Princes episode. The clan, a Machiavellian trading dynasty whose members can cross among parallel universes, are losing co
### From Publishers Weekly Readers unfamiliar with Stross's *Clan Corporate* (2006) and its predecessors should hunt them down before diving into this breakneck fourth Merchant Princes episode. The clan, a Machiavellian trading dynasty whose members can cross among parallel universes, are losing co
AΒ dissident faction of the Clan, the alternate universe group of families that has traded covertly with our world for a century or more, have carried nuclear devices between the worlds and exploded them in Washington, DC, killing the President of the United States. Now they will exterminate the rest