This is the sixth in Stross’s Merchants’ War series, and the concluding volume of the story line begun in The Family Trade. The series has been described, half-seriously, as “Amber with economics,” noting its resemblance to Roger Zelazny’s long-running saga of dynastic backstabbing among members of a family that can move between alternate worlds, and the primacy of economic elements in the problems addressed by Stross’s protagonists.
Stross left the reader with a major cliffhanger at the end of the previous volume—I’m not going to spoil the fun (or agony, as some would see it) for anyone who hasn’t read it. Suffice it to say that, at the beginning of this volume, Stross keeps the suspense going for a good while longer before letting the shoe drop—which he does with all the fireworks at his disposal. Even so, this book’s about finishing up loose ends, although it looks for a while as if some of them are going to be pretty hard for him to tie together.

Most of the action still centers on Miriam Beckstein, the Boston-based technojournalist who discovered at the beginning of the series that she was part of the royal family in a medieval society in a parallel North America. Having survived the attempts of various factions to either manipulate or eliminate her, she is now attempting to forge a life in another parallel world that has just undergone a revolution. But she’s jumped from one frying pan to another; other members of her extended family are already there, ready to cut deals with the new government. And Miriam’s friends may be well placed in the new regime, but they aren’t necessarily the ones with the lion’s share of power.

In the Grunmarkt, the medieval society where Miriam’s family has ruled for so long, the power struggles have also reached crisis level. Thanks to a conservative faction that opposed any attempts to shake up the ruling hierarchy or introduce any hint of a meritocracy, a crippling civil war has killed off a significant number of the worldwalkers—those who, like Miriam, can travel between the parallel worlds. Some have fled with Miriam to New Britain, the revolutionary world. Others have explored and found still other new worlds—all different, some possibly inhabitable. At least one world they’ve found is far more advanced, technologically, than even twenty-first century America. But the immediate problem in the Grunmarkt is surviving the blowup Miriam and her friends can see on the horizon.

Meanwhile, in our world, the existence of alternate worlds has come to the attention of the US government, which is eager to exploit their untapped mineral deposits and other natural resources. But the Grunmarkt isn’t eager to be exploited, and resents what it sees as American interference in its affairs. Worldwalkers can penetrate into places apparently safe, and their leaders don’t especially care who gets hurt. As a result, things are about to go extremely wrong, and the danger level has gone off the charts for everyone who knows anything about the alternate worlds. Mike Fleming, a former DEA agent who learned Miriam’s secrets before falling out of favor with his bosses, is one of those trying to do damage control. And of course nobody believes him until it’s too late—at which point he’s more concerned about staying alive than anything else.

The forward momentum of the plotlines is remarkable; Stross juggles three worlds, each in crisis, with a large cast of characters who all have urgent agendas. He also manages to dispense rough fictional justice to a couple of real-life personages who’ve played a role in earlier volumes—probably in a manner that’ll alienate readers of a certain political bent—but he’s enough of a realist to know it won’t change things; their replacements are, if anything, even worse. He also throws around a few additional bombshells in the political plot developing in our world, with consequences that are likely to resonate widely in future narratives set in this fictional universe.

By the end, the immediate plotlines have been put to rest—and there’s the promise of more to come, any time Stross wants to return to this, his most effective and complex piece of world-building.
If you’ve been waiting for the end of the series to finish it, here you are. And if you haven’t started it, you can now do so without having to wait a year or more for the next installment. For my money, it’s one of the best reads in years.

A paranormal romance by the daughter of one of science fiction’s finest writers, Robert Sheckley. And although nobody should come to this expecting the younger Sheckley to be a direct inheritor of her father’s inimitable approach to storytelling, there are some off-the-wall touches and bits of straight-faced humor that the old man would surely have enjoyed.
Sheckley’s protagonist is Abra Barrow, a veterinarian living in New York and married to a travel writer, Hunter, whose recent journey to Romania to research a book on werewolves seems to have left him oddly changed. For one thing, his sexual appetite is much stronger than it used to be—and his idea of fun is a lot rougher. Scarier, there are hints that he’s seeing someone besides his wife.

At the same time, weird things are also happening on the job. Abra’s boss is researching a gene that he believes is related to lycanthropy. And just as the book begins, a shabby-looking fellow named Red comes in to rescue a wolf-like dog that has been found on the streets. The plot takes several unfortunate turns, and in an attempt to save a marriage that looks very much as if it’s falling apart, Abra agrees to move with Hunter to his family home, an isolated mansion in an upstate New York town called Northside.

The move upstate brings them into a very different community from what they’ve known in the city. First of all, they’re in an isolated house, with a good drive to get into town—and when they get there, the population is considerably less, uh, urbane. In fact, the main locations we get to know are a redneck bar and an isolated trailer community—the latter, as it happens, the home of Red, the shabby stranger Abra met in the city.

But the move has done nothing to solve the main problems. Abra has no chance of finding suitable work in the local community, so she’s at complete loose ends. Meanwhile, Hunter seems to be going off the deep end. And there are signs that some kind of wild animal is hunting in their neighborhood.

Sheckley plays the hints of lycanthropy for all they’re worth, while doing a good job of keeping the romantic plot moving. There’s probably a good bit more explicit sex than is typical of genre fantasy or horror, and a good bit more introspection on the part of the narrator. But the plot tension is well handled, and at least for this reader, the story develops in unclichéd ways. Abra ends up with a choice between two men, both dangerous in their way, and while her final choice may not be a complete surprise, the resolution is satisfying.

As a bonus, there’s also a cast of wacked-out minor characters that would have been the joy of many a Robert Sheckley novel, and his daughter gives them a good workout. Abra’s woo-woo mother, a former movie star who lives in Pleasantville with a pack of yippy little dogs, is the prize, but her various assistants and boyfriends aren’t far behind. Likewise, Abra’s various colleagues at the veterinary lab where she works at the beginning of the book are freshly observed and well drawn—with just enough of a humorous edge.

Sheckley has a definite flair for comic portraiture, the ability to pull surprises out of a relatively conventional genre plot, and a good eye for setting. Even if your usual reading fare is a good distance from the paranormal subgenre, it’s worth taking a step across genre lines (a walk on the wild side, if you will) to get a look at this fresh new talent. You may just decide you like the change of scenery and settle in for a while.

The ever-reliable Morrow combines horror film history and the Manhattan Project for a scathing satire that hits many targets despite checking in at novella length.
The narrator is a veteran horror film actor, Syms Thorley, a Lon Chaney-like studio regular in the golden era of schlock monster movies. As we meet him, he is contemplating suicide after receiving a lifetime achievement award from a Baltimore media convention for his role as the monster in a series of films starring the giant reptilian monster Gorgantis—clearly parallel to the Godzilla thrillers. The novella is presented as his suicide note. Just why he wants to end it all, at a point many might see as a triumph, emerges as the story unfolds.

Morrow, characteristically, has a number of satirical targets in his viewfinder. One, the broadest, is the Hollywood studio system, and all the pumped-up egos surrounding it—his narrator being a prime example. A secondary target is media fandom itself, which he gives the kind of affectionate roasting that only a fellow devotee can really manage. But the big game is the atomic bomb, and the entire military enterprise that went into its creation, deployment, and the later nuclear arms race that still hangs over the future of civilization in hot spots all across the globe.

After setting the scene from his self-imposed isolation in a Baltimore hotel room, Thorley flashes back to the latter stages of World War II, when he was filming one of his monster epics. He is approached by two men who identify themselves as naval officers, and given a choice: work with them on a super-secret project, or get drafted. No fool, he accepts the job offer—not without a healthy dose of sarcastic commentary.

Thorley goes for the job interview with the Knickerbocker Project, and passes the security check despite an impulse to play the wise guy to everyone around him. The job, it turns out, is to impersonate a gigantic reptile; the Navy has developed a group of such mutated lizards, but unfortunately they can only be controlled if they’re kept sedated. It plans to use Thorley, in costume, smashing a model city, to threaten the Japanese in hopes of precipitating a surrender. (It is already clear that the cost of an invasion of the Japanese mainland will be more than America dares to pay.) And the Navy is in a hurry to complete its project; word has it that if the lizards don’t pan out, the Army has something of its own in the plans. Whatever the cost, the Navy doesn’t want to lose the race for the war-ending weapon.

Morrow throws enough obstacles in Thorley’s way—a jealous rival actor, problems with the elaborate lizard costume, special effects that become a little too special—to give the actor plenty to kvetch about, and to throw some suspense into the plot. There are enough surprises in the latter stages of the plot that I won’t give them away except to note that almost nothing comes out as planned. Needless to say, the satiric points are driven home with Morrow’s characteristic glee and dark humor—and not a little poignancy in the final pages.
I’ve long been an admirer of Morrow’s satiric edge and outrageous inventiveness, and it’s clear that he’s kept his skill nicely honed over the years. Highly recommended; and incidentally still another proof that some of the best work in the field is now being published by the smaller presses.

A fantasy based on magical wine, set in a medieval-like world—and the start of a series, the Vineart Wars.
Gilman chooses as her protagonist Jerzy, a slave boy working in a vineyard. Like all slaves in this world, he is of unknown origin—bought by his master from traveling slavers who make no attempt to keep records of where they picked up their wares. During the grape harvest, he reveals an unexpected awareness of the quality of the wine—and comes to the attention of Malech, a master vintner with life and death power over his workers.

At first, the book follows the familiar pattern of an apprentice wizard’s training, a theme as old as fantasy. Jerzy learns the basics of his master’s trade, with side lessons in combat, civilized manners, and other matters that were beyond what was expected of a field slave. Gilman throws in the added fun of a completely fresh body of esoteric knowledge, the ancient and highly evolved technology of wine-making. This, along with a novel religion underlying the magic, gives the book an energy that many more generic medieval societies don’t ever achieve.

The plot picks up momentum with the arrival of a threat from unknown regions—a series of attacks on vinearts and their allies. We get glimpses of the threat in a prefatory chapter, and in brief jumps away from Jerzy’s training to the island kingdom of Atakus, where an unexpected murder throws the succession to the throne into chaos—and forces drastic political choices that threaten all the island’s trading partners.

The trouble grows with the disappearance of ships at sea and strange grubs and rots attacking the grapes in widely separated vineyards. But it is the arrival of sea monsters preying on coastal villages that convinces Vineart Malech that something unprecedented is afoot—requiring a response that breaks with precedent. Jerzy, for his part, gets an up-close encounter with one of the monsters—and we get a hint that his powers (especially in the unorthodox way he puts them to work) may be greater than one would expect from an apprentice of less than a year’s experience.

Malech sends Jerzy to the city of Alleppan to study with another winemaker, Giordan—a radical departure from tradition, which requires each wineart to remain on his own land, train his own apprentices, and keep his knowledge close. The idea is to keep any one wizard from becoming too powerful. While he is there, Malech wants Jerzy to keep his eyes open for anything that may give a hint to the source of the problems sweeping their world.

After an uncomfortable sea voyage, Jerzy’s first experience of the city, at the palace of the all-powerful mayor, is disorienting. He has no idea how to deal with the most ordinary daily maneuverings of a court, and he finds his new mentor’s ways confusing in their differences from the life he is used to. For one thing, Vineart Giordan’s vines are on property owned by the mayor, and he works them with hired labor, not slaves. And because the custom is for new vinearts to be recruited from the master’s slaves, Giordan has never had an apprentice.
Jerzy also has problems figuring out how to do the spying that Malech expects of him; completely guileless, he is over his head in the complex society of a large city. But he quickly finds an ally—and a friend —in an apprentice trader, Ao, who tries to teach him subtlety and subterfuge. Eventually, of course, things go sour—the political situation is worse than anyone has guessed. But the book ends with Jerzy on the way to another stage in his apprenticeship—and deeper understanding of the crisis overtaking his world.

This one’s a bit of a departure for Gilman, whose previous original work has been stylish urban fantasy with a strong romantic flavor. Here, while there are hints that Jerzy may eventually hook up with one of the woman characters, any sexual tension is definitely kept under wraps. The new series is definitely a step up in ambition, and has a good chance to appeal to a larger audience than the “Retrievers” books that have been her most notable work so far.