'Dark State' picks up where 'Empire Games' left off. This is now the eighth Merchant Princes book and as a consequence the backstory and history is increasingly Byzantine. As always, the tale is well constructed and generally well paced. In this volume, Stross leaves the recounting of the historical underpinnings of the 'Commonwealth' timeline, in which most of the action is focused in this installment, to an appendix after the cliffhanger conclusion, thus avoiding infodumps which to an extend bedevilled the prequel.
The scope of the story is broadened by the introduction of a new piece on the board of the 'game of Empires' in Elizabeth Hannover, heir to the North American absolute monarchy overthrown by the revolutionary Levelers (with world walking assistance from the refugees from the nuclear destruction of the 'Gruinmarkt' timeline). Elizabeth, seeking escape from an unwelcome dynastic marriage, conspires with Commonwealth agents to defect. A plan is made, a truly cunning plan, of which Baldrick would be proud. It might just involve multiple transitions between timelines, secret message drops and safehouses, eluding secret police and sundry security forces and piloting light aircraft between universes into chancy weather whilst suffering splitting migraines or worse. Nothing could possibly go wrong, could it?
Meanwhile, Miriam Beckstein's daughter Rita Douglas, raised in spycraft by the orphaned Stasi operatives of the deceased DDR continues to serve her new (and duplicitous) masters in Ubiquitously Surveilled America. She was recruited to mess with her long lost mother's head, but circumstances might have changed. At a transition point in the new democracy of the Commonwealth's existence they might have to make peace to buy time. Meanwhile, the back in the Paranoid States of America, folk might just be poking into matters they barely understand, and wake something or someone which might better have been left sleeping.
It is clear that big stakes are there to play for in the upcoming ninth book 'Invisible Sun'. Can't wait to see how it turns out.
The scope of the story is broadened by the introduction of a new piece on the board of the 'game of Empires' in Elizabeth Hannover, heir to the North American absolute monarchy overthrown by the revolutionary Levelers (with world walking assistance from the refugees from the nuclear destruction of the 'Gruinmarkt' timeline). Elizabeth, seeking escape from an unwelcome dynastic marriage, conspires with Commonwealth agents to defect. A plan is made, a truly cunning plan, of which Baldrick would be proud. It might just involve multiple transitions between timelines, secret message drops and safehouses, eluding secret police and sundry security forces and piloting light aircraft between universes into chancy weather whilst suffering splitting migraines or worse. Nothing could possibly go wrong, could it?
Meanwhile, Miriam Beckstein's daughter Rita Douglas, raised in spycraft by the orphaned Stasi operatives of the deceased DDR continues to serve her new (and duplicitous) masters in Ubiquitously Surveilled America. She was recruited to mess with her long lost mother's head, but circumstances might have changed. At a transition point in the new democracy of the Commonwealth's existence they might have to make peace to buy time. Meanwhile, the back in the Paranoid States of America, folk might just be poking into matters they barely understand, and wake something or someone which might better have been left sleeping.
It is clear that big stakes are there to play for in the upcoming ninth book 'Invisible Sun'. Can't wait to see how it turns out.
RSS Feed
