The Hidden Family

By Charles Stross

The Hidden Family by Charles StrossWhen I reviewed the first in this series, The Family Trade, I remember being blown away by how such a simple premise could be made into such a gripping thriller. I’m pleased to say that part two of the series, The Hidden Family, carries on in the same tradition.

We rejoin Miriam in the aftermath of the botched assassination attempt, on the lam in her own (our) world with her friend Paulette and the Lady-in-Waiting and world-walking newbie, Brilliana D’Ost, in tow. While examining a locket found on the body of one of the would-be assassins, Miriam realises the pattern is subtly different to the normal patterns the world walkers use to travel between her world and their own and, after using it, discovers yet another parallel world, but one that the Family does not realise exists.

This new world is the centre of a new British Empire and, while technologically more advanced than Gruinmarkt, it is still many years behind our own. Armed with this information, Miriam sets about establishing and growing a business in this new world so that she can import and exploit 20th century technology thereby establishing her own base of power and wealth and in the process safeguard her existence in both of the others while, hopefully, shielding herself from arranged marriages and family feuds. But while it all sounds so easy she still has to contend with this new world’s secret police, political unrest, more assassins, keeping the new family at bay and uncovering the identity of the traitor whose actions threaten not just the lives of those she holds close, but the family’s entire operations in our world.

Once again Charles Stross has shown how effortlessly he manages to weave the myriad strands of a complex story into something that is at once engaging, exciting and thought provoking in equal measure. The familiar characters have clearly grown since their last outing and, since the pace of this book is much slower than the last, the new ones have depth and charm from the outset and show markedly different cultural ticks from world to world, in itself, no mean feat. Stross also spends more time building the worlds that feature in the story, particularly the quasi-Victorian new world that Miriam discovers. While in part this is due to the fact that she spends a good deal of her time their in this novel, it’s also a welcome change because it’s handled deftly and with a good deal of attention to detail.

But if the quality of writing wasn’t enough to raise The Merchant Princes saga out of the morass of contemporary fantasy genre writing, the political debate at its heart stands it head and shoulders above everything else. Stross builds big questions into his books. Questions about economics and poverty across worlds that seem similar but are wildly different. The poor in the Gruinmarkt are much poorer than the rich, but they are also an order of magnitude poorer than the poorest people in our world. Miriam fragrantly disregards patents and copyrights to exploit old, existing technology in her new world knowing that, while she can make money, the new world will benefit enormously not just from the technology itself, but in jobs and manufacturing and finance and everything else across the political board. There are strong parallels here with transfer of technology from the West to parts of Africa, South America and Asia and about whether protecting that copyright is worth more than the well-being of the new countries or the lives of the people that inhabit them.

But these books do not preach. The education is subtle and explored through a story that is, at its heart, a very decent political thriller, written in a very accessible style that will keep you on the edge of your seat and guessing till the end. You can’t ask for much more than that except roll-on book three.

The Hidden Family is published by Tor through Pan Macmillan and is available from Amazon, Blackwell and all good book stores.

Charles Stross has a bunch of stuff online here.