Empire Games, Charles Stross
Empire Games, Charles Stross
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Empire Games
A Tale of the Merchant Princes Universe

Author: Charles Stross

Narrator: Kate Reading

Unabridged: 13 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/17/2017


Synopsis

Charles Stross builds a new series with Empire Games. Expanding on the world he created in the Family Trade series, a new generation of paratime travellers walk between parallel universes. The year is 2020. It's seventeen years since the Revolution overthrew the last king of the New British Empire, and the newly-reconstituted North American Commonwealth is developing rapidly, on course to defeat the French and bring democracy to a troubled world. But Miriam Burgeson, commissioner in charge of the shadowy Ministry of Intertemporal Research and Intelligence--the paratime espionage agency tasked with catalyzing the Commonwealth's great leap forward--has a problem. For years, she's warned everyone: "The Americans are coming." Now their drones arrive in the middle of a succession crisis, for their leader, First Man Adam, is dying of cancer, and the vultures are circling.

In another timeline, the U.S. has recruited Rita, Miriam's own estranged daughter, to spy across timelines in order to bring down any remaining world-walkers who might threaten national security. But her handlers are keeping information from her.

Two nuclear superpowers are set on a collision course. Two increasingly desperate paratime espionage agencies are fumbling around in the dark, trying to find a solution to the first contact problem that doesn't result in a nuclear holocaust. And two women--a mother and her long-lost, adopted-out daughter--are about to find themselves on opposite sides of the confrontation.

About Charles Stross

CHARLES STROSS (he/him) is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has won three Hugo Awards for Best Novella, including for the Laundry Files tale “Equoid.” His work has been translated into over twelve languages. His novels include the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry series (including Locus Award finalist The Dilirium Brief), and several stand-alones including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn's Children. Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped catastrophes, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stakeout) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing, he tried to change employers just as the bubble burst) to technical writer and prolific journalist covering the IT industry. Along the way he collected degrees in pharmacy and computer science, making him the world’s first officially qualified cyberpunk writer.

About Kate Reading

Kate Reading is the recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards and has been named by AudioFile magazine as a “Voice of the Century,” as well as the Best Voice in Science Fiction & Fantasy in 2008 and 2009 and Best Voice in Biography & Culture in 2010. She has narrated works by such authors as Jane Austen, Robert Jordan, Edith Wharton, and Sophie Kinsella. Reading has performed at numerous theaters in Washington D.C. and received a Helen Hayes Award for her performance in Aunt Dan and Lemon. AudioFile magazine reports that, "With subtle control of characters and sense of pacing, Kate’s performances are a consistent pleasure."


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bradley

I put off reading this Stross novel for the weirdest of reasons. I assumed, based on the blurb, (if not the series caption,) that it was part of the Merchant Princes books. I was right. And I was wrong. Much time has passed since the events of those Merchant Princes novels. We get to return to Miriam......more

Goodreads review by David

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy via NetGalley One of my most anticipated books for 2017, Empire Games picks up the story of the world-walking Clan seventeen years on. In Stross's multi-timeline Merchant Princes sequence (originally published as 6 books, collected as The Bloodline Fe......more

I usually love Stross' work, but this started out with the kind of background material you see in the 5th book of a series--four different timeline, with people able to move between them and all the divergent events, then character profiles of people I didn't particularly care about. By the time I g......more