Review of The Family Trade by Charles Stross

This start to his alternate historical science fiction series proves that Charles Stross is an outstanding talent and – unsurprisingly – won the 2005 Sideways Award for Alternative History, as well as a nomination for a Locus Award.

Miriam Beckstein is happy in her life. She’s a successful reporter for a hi-tech magazine in Boston, making good money doing what she loves. When her researcher brings her iron-clad evidence of a money-laundering scheme, Miriam thinks she’s found the story of the year. But when she takes it to her editor, she’s fired on the spot and gets a death threat from the criminals she has uncovered.  Before the day is over, she’s received a locket left by the mother she never knew – the mother who was murdered when she was an infant. Within is a knotwork pattern, which has a hypnotic effect on her. Before she knows it, she’s transported herself to a parallel Earth, a world where knights on horseback chase their prey with automatic weapons, and where world-skipping assassins lurk just on the other side of reality – a world where her true family runs things.

I love this world – where Miriam is constantly cold away from her modern comforts. Where, as a thirty-two year old, she is regarded as a dowager – almost past her prime purpose, which is to make an advantageous match and provide plenty of babies also capable of world-walking. However, as the tension mounts and news leaks out that she has been found, Miriam finds herself in acute danger and unable to fully trust anyone – not even Roland… The heroine is enjoyably complex with a completely understandable reaction to the shock of switching between the two worlds.

This is standard fantasy fare – but there is nothing standard about the rawness and real sense of trauma experienced by Miriam as she finds herself catapulted into this new, hostile existence without any prospect of being able to safely return to her former life. As we are pulled into her adventures, there is a constant sense of danger as she feels herself unable to completely trust anyone in this complicated, brutal world. While the intrigue thickens and the plot gathers momentum, Stross keeps the pace and narrative driving forward to the end of this particular story – leaving me looking forward to reading the second book in the series, The Hidden Family.
10/10

Review of The Fuller Memorandum – Book 3 of The Laundry series by Charles Stross

This account is narrated as a debrief by the longsuffering Bob Howard, who works for the undercover British agency known as The Laundry. They are a down-at-heel, typically Brit-bodge version of the Men in Black, busy battling with nasty occult occurrences and alien incursions. Bob is trying to come to terms with the emotional fallout after his latest hair-raising adventure.

A top secret dossier goes missing. At the same time, Angleton, Bob’s boss disappears. No one is saying very much at The Laundry but suspicion, like mud, sticks. While struggling to clear his own name and Angleton’s tarnished reputation, Bob also has to cope with over-helpful Russian agents, worries about an apocalyptic cult targeting his wife – and the trail of dead bodies. What is so important about the missing Fuller Memorandum and why is everyone who knows dying…?

Told in first person viewpoint, this spy horror clips along with all the zest and ink-black humour of the previous books in the series. Poor old Bob has to put up with a lot, and his world-weary, humorous commentary gives this book an extra twist of enjoyment. Stross evidently has great affection for Bond films and H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, because he borrows elements from both these influences and mixes them in a neat combination that has you chuckling while your skin pimples… It is a uniquely disturbing and memorable reading experience.

The world works wonderfully well and Stross skilfully plays with the tedium of Bob’s everyday office life set against the dangerous nature of his job. So the knowledge that we are on the verge of being invaded by some ghastly alien power vies with the notion that all paperclip movement needs to be strictly monitored because they become imprinted with traces of the documents they fasten… The book teeters on the edge of farce and horror all the way to the suitably horrific climax.

Stross is no slouch at characterisation, either. Mo, Bob’s intrepid and very accomplished wife, is beautifully drawn. But Angleton, Bob’s mysterious boss, is the true star of this tale and Bob’s viewpoint of him, along with his understandable resentment as a subordinate, is compelling enough to draw us in and make us care – very important in this story.

Any grizzles? Well… I’m being ultra-picky here – but in a genre where pace is everything, there were instances where I felt Bob’s doom-laden monologues could have done with being pruned back for the sake of keeping the tension wound sufficiently tight. But, overall, it is a trifling detail. I think this book is a triumph. If you’re feeling a bit jaded and looking for something truly different, then look no further. You won’t pick anything else off the shelves quite like this, I guarantee it.
4.5 stars