The Clan Corporate

I'm a big fan of Charles Stross's the Merchant Princes series, and I've been eagerly anticipating the release of The Clan Corporate, the third book in the series. For those of you not familiar with the series I will give you a brief plot overview.

Minor spoilers.

The premise is that there are multiple worlds. and that certain people have the genetic ability to move between them by concentrated on a particular pattern associated with a particular world. One of the world is ours. This is the world our protagonist Miriam Beckstein was brought up in. But our Earth is not the world she was born into. She is a scion of the Clan, the familial alliance of genetic world walkers, who have used their ability to cross to modern Earth to amass great fortune and great power in their medieval world. Miriam reintegration into that world has caused them a number of headaches however.
That is where the third book picks up.

Stross writes another page turner. The book is a fun and easy read. I previously called this series two parts Zelazny's Amber and one part Puzo's The Godfather. This book adds in what feels like a forth part Tom Clancy. The introduction of the pov of a DEA agent is part of the fall out of book two's climax. Stoss also gives us a number of interludes consisting of transcripts of conversations between minor or supporting characters. They felt a bit odd and out of place. Miriam also seems changed. Where up to this point she has adapted and overcome all the challenges presented to her, in this book she seems much more helpless.

Overall, the book seemed to have a different feel to it than the opening installments. While I still enjoyed The Clan Corporate immensely, I don't think this volume was as good as the first two.

7.5 out of 10