The Clan Corporate: Book Three of The Merchant Princes

Written by Charles Stross

Narrated by Kate Reading

The third book (after The Family Trade and The Hidden Family) in the saga of the Merchant Princes by Charles Stross, in which Miriam gets into deadly trouble.

Miriam Beckstein has gotten in touch with her roots and they have nearly strangled her. A young, hip, business journalist in Boston, she discovered (in The Family Trade ) that her family comes from an alternate reality, that she is very well-connected, and that her family is a lot too much like the mafia for comfort. In addition, starting with the fact that women are family property and required to breed more family members with the unique talent to walk between worlds, she has tried to remain an outsider and her own woman. And start a profitable business in a third world she has discovered, outside the family reach (recounted in The Hidden Family). She fell in love with a distant relative but he's dead, killed saving her life. There have been murders, betrayals.

Now, however, in The Clan Corporate, she may be overreaching. And if she gets caught, death or a fate worse is around the bend. There is for instance the brain-damaged son of the local king who needs a wife. But they'd never make her do that, would they?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Mar 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781427262868

Charles Stross

CHARLES STROSS (he/him) is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has won three Hugo Awards for Best Novella, including for the Laundry Files tale “Equoid.” His work has been translated into over twelve languages. His novels include the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry series (including Locus Award finalist The Dilirium Brief), and several stand-alones including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn's Children. Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped catastrophes, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stakeout) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing, he tried to change employers just as the bubble burst) to technical writer and prolific journalist covering the IT industry. Along the way he collected degrees in pharmacy and computer science, making him the world’s first officially qualified cyberpunk writer.

Reviews for The Clan Corporate

[shadowfoot_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the first half of this book but discovered it didn't get very far with the existing characters. It is an incomplete story and needs the next book to tell a story in itself.

[mendoza_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Stross's third edition in his Merchant Princes series finds 33-year-old Boston journalist Miriam Beckstein still caught in a "barely post-feudal" alternate world where she's part of a mafiosa-like family called "the Clan." Miriam's rather foolish, headstrong decisions help propel the plot along quickly. While Miriam can be frustratingly dense, playing right into her enemies hands, the book moves along to a cliffhanger ending that leaves me somewhat eagerly awaiting the next installment.WHen I am able to get past Mariam's faults I really do still enjoy this series and will continue on.

[macha_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

huh. well, that's a precipitous decline in quality from the first two in the series. also the book goes a long way to destroying the series' lead character. with at least three books to go, that's a bold move.

[hagelrat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Miriam was born on our side, raised by adoptive parents in an America where women are equals. Suddenly drawn back into the plotting and politics of the great families on the other side Miriam finds herself not only restricted, but subject to blackmail and the political machinations that any female world walker is fated to deal with. With her modern views and sense of personal freedom this does not sit well and Miriam continues to fight the system, even while her alter ego Helge is making a pretense of trying to fit in.Back on our side Matt has defected taking his knowledge of the second world and it's cross world drug smuggling to the DEA in return for witness protection. Of course that doesn't go quite to plan.Stross is a sharp, witty writer with a wonderful imagination, creating new twists on the staples of fantasy, a feudal system & royal plots, blending with post 9/11 terror conscious America.

[mbg0312 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This one was a bit more of a slog for me than its predecessors. It felt like Stross was spending most of the book setting up for the next one, rather than developing a work that stands on its own. That said, I am very much looking forward to the next one, which seems set up to proceed at a good clip.

[elmyra_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Another enjoyable read, as things get nasty and more things explode. Though nothing much happens to Helge as she spends most of the book locked up in one place or another. The weakest of the volumes so far.

[penforhire · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am starting to think Mr. Stross is playing a game with his readers in this series. I'm imagining him saying to himself, "let's see how far I have to go to lose every single reader's suspension of disbelief." My other rationale is maybe someone else wrote parts of this series. Or it was an exercise for National Novel Writing Month.He mires his wonderful protagonist character down in so much muck that she doesn't have room to breathe as a character. He goes further and begins to betray the confident woman he created. She is now continuously weak, lacks foresight, and has a child's sense of consequences.The ending of this book is a three ring circus, an Irwin Allen-sized disaster movie. The coincidences pile on far too high for me to suspend my disbelief. Mike's first assignment in the middle world happens to be with Mirriam (who he dated in the past) and the wedding announcement party is crashed by the prince at exactly the same time Mike is there to see her. Stop! Just... no. There are other similar issues but the ending was most egregious. This is the sort of plotting a teenage boy writes, not one of my favorite authors.Going back, there was the whole episode with Matthias trying to escape. That sequence was so stupid it hurt. A smart security-conscious type does WHAT? The nuclear threat alone would have been enough to get closer to the front door than he got.I'm invested enough in the story to continue but I'm hoping this is the lowest point in the crafting of this series.

[lewispike · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Continuing the saga of politics, mercantile conflict, alternative worlds and the like.This book is, for me, somewhat unsatisfying. The formerly cautious Mirriam takes unnecessary risks, even when warned not to and gets into deep shit. It seems more than a little out of character for her.There's an, apparently so far deus ex machina unnecessary tie to her old life with a new "real world" thread that develops from a whole mess of alphabet agencies when Mattias' defection comes first to the DEA and then various other folks get interested as they come to see the clan as a potential hostile government. That really drags the book down to my mind - not because I disbelieve it, I just find it depressing.I also understand the reasons why, but find that I miss time in New Britain, the victorian police state, it's more interesting than either of the others, particularly when Mirriam spends a lot of her time in Gruinmarkt basically under house arrest, actual or otherwise.I'll get the next one in the series, but I'm hoping it improves more than a little.

[sben-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I have mixed feelings about this book. I continue to be satisfied with the world-building; this actually puts some thought into the economic and political consequences of parallel universes with restricted travel between them. Characterization is acceptable. The plot didn't grab, somehow, and there is no wrap-up or closure at the end, just a "and in the next chapter ... you'll have to buy the next book to find out!".

I probably will buy the next book, but not a new hardcover.