Revolution Business/Trade of Queens by Charles Stross

Started: 23 November, 2012
Finished: 30 November, 2012
Combined pages: 324/303 = 627

Technically these are the last two books in a series of six:  but like Blackout/All Clear, all of the books in  the Merchant Princes series are part of a single narrative.  There isn't even a trace of a recap at the beginning of each book.

Which was a bit of a problem:  I read the first three books in about 2009, and ummm....wasn't entirely clear on every detail anymore when I started in on The Revolution Business.  But I soon remembered why I'd stalled before finishing the series.  Despite the non-stop action, the books are kind of tedious.

Yes, there are a few interesting ideas.  There is suspense.  There are surprises.  There is action and adventure.  The main character is an innocent abroad who acts as our proxy as we learn about the parallel world that exists beside our own, separated from us only by several hundred years of economic and social development,  and the rare inherited ability to step between worlds.

But....there are also plots and counter plots, alliances and betrayals, double-crosses and triple-crosses, and schemes within schemes.  Which is all well and good until...you begin to feel an irrestistible urge to ...yaaawwn.   Of course subplot x is actually an attempt by character X to double-cross character y.  We haven't had a plot shift in almost 3 pages. Yaaaaawwwn.  What was I saying again?

Oh yeah.  Stross calls this economic science fiction.  And it could have been, if he's spent more time exploring why one world is our world and one world is medieval, and played more with the Family Trade instead of writing a series of cheap thrillers.