Review
_The Clan Corporate_ is the exciting third book in the excellent Merchant Princes series by Charles Stross.
In the first two novels, despite feeling very much a fish out of water in the strange world of Gruinmarkt, Miriam had some measure of control over her life. She was (and in this book, still is) resourceful, talented, bold, takes initiative, and is very accomplished at thinking on her feet.
Unfortunately, that is not always enough in life. Things go from bad to worse for Miriam as after an unfortunate mistake she is locked up. Threatened with death for doing something regarded by the Clan as treason, she finds her options reduced from many to only one; world walkers are very valuable and rare and the Clan would absolutely love to have ties to the royal family – she is to marry one of the two princes and have at least several children, not only insuring the Clan continues to have a supply of world walkers but buying the Clan tremendous political connections and prestige.
Cloistered in a castle, a virtual prisoner, forced by the Clan to learn their world’s language, royal etiquette, and overall stop being Miriam (and American) and start being Helge, our protagonist finds herself isolated from actions that while not initiated by Miriam will very much affect her. First of all, the King’s other son is not at all happy with Miriam’s impeding marriage with his brother and takes action to prevent this. Second, the United States, working with the defector Matthias, has finally gotten a toe-hold in what they call “fairyland” (the Gruinmarkt). At first having come to appreciate the Clan as highly organized, well-informed, and very well armed cross-dimensional drug smugglers, they soon come to appreciate them as a far, far worse threat when Matthias gives them strong reason to believe that the Clan has planted nuclear weapons on our world. Enter Mike Fleming, a federal agent (and former boyfriend of Miriam’s), a man who becomes part of a federal program design to study and if possible bring down the Clan.
Though New Britain doesn’t figure as much into the storyline as it did in the second volume in the series, important developments nonetheless occur there as well.
Part of the book had a different tone than the rest of the series, the part that dealt with Miriam being locked up in the castle. For a time I had a hard time imagining how she would get out of that situation and Stross did a good job of generating sympathy for the character. The last part of the book stands in vivid contrast and was quite exciting, boding well for this excellent series. Overall I have found the series to be tremendously entertaining.
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