Charles Stross, The Clan Corporate (Tor, 2006)
The Clan Corporate is the third volume of Stross' six volume Merchant Princes saga; The Family Trade and The Hidden Family precede it.
The central character is Miriam, the American born and raised World-walker, member of a clan of tinkers and peddlers turned merchant princes by virtue of a carefully maintained genetic ability to "walk" between three known worlds, one of them ours, one of them the home of the medieval kingdom of Gruinmarkt, and one the world that contains vaguely nineteenth century like New Britain. Miriam has survived a massacre, one caused by a defector from the Family, a Clan member who escaped to our world and spilled his guts about the "family trade," wherein the Clan act as couriers carrying goods, especially things like arms and cocaine, between the three worlds. The federal government knows about the Clan and the other two worlds. They're engaging in a little world-walking of their own. And Miriam, or Countess Helge, as she is known in Gruinmarkt, is the ex of one of the key federal agents.
Helge, meanwhile, is in protective custody, of a sort, in the bosom of her mother's family; she is being forcibly groomed to take her place as the mother of another generation of world walkers for the Clan. This does not sit well with an independent woman who, in the previous book, created her own technology research firm in New Britain and worked as an investigative journalist in our world.
Miriam is caught between three cultures, two of which are in the middle of enormous cultural changes. She's woefully ill-prepared to deal with the inner machinations and understand the real power of the Clan, never mind the aristocratic social hierarchies of a medieval trade state, or the various, possibly atom-weapon bearing, constituencies surrounding New Britain. Her basic assumptions about human nature, business and politics are proving disasterously inaccurate. Stross, by the way, deserves real points for thinking about his eras, about the nature of medieval trade relationships, the annoyances of medieval life and the hazards of social navigation.
All Miriam's basic assumptions, even her coping strategies, are wrong for her role as Helge. Her mother is a hostage for Miriam's good behavior, or, possibly, one of the driving forces behind the plan for Miriam to breed a world-walking royal heir. Helge makes several wrong moves in this novel, but there are indications that she's at least becoming aware of where she went wrong.
This volume introduces several characters, most importantly, Mike, Miriam's ex. It also presents others in new lights, making it as difficult for us as it is for Miriam to judge motivations and loyalties. There are several equally interesting narrative threads, and while I enjoyed the book, it ends in an odd place, since none of the threads are resolved.
I'm not alone in my somewhat unsettled reaction; a good friend called me this morning, having eagerly awaited the book, and just finished it last night, to express his frustration at the fact there's there's less emphasis on Miriam doing much of anything, and a lot less plot than he was expecting. In part, I suspect our anticlimactic response is in part because as originally conceived, Clan Corporate was not the third novel in the series, but the beginning of the second; Tor split the initial book into two. There's also a bit of time spent on exposition and background, which was sometimes a little wearing, but probably necessary. On the bright side, there is more to come; The Merchants War is due out in October 2007. I'll be ready.
