This is the second book in the 'Empire Games' trilogy, which is a sequel to the 'Merchant Princes' saga that was originally published as six novels but became a trilogy of paired books, if that makes sense. I haven't read any of the 'Merchant Princes' books, but I have read 'Empire Games' and that included lots of setup to get this book moving. Perhaps the biggest problem this book has is that it hasn't got remotely close to the number of pages needed to do justice to Stross' worldbuilding.

If the first book was a setup, this is more setup. I have 'Invisible Sun' ready to go, but I can't imagine how it might wrap up everything. Sure, some character or story arcs might reach a conclusion, but I'm expecting at this point that this series has a long way to go. In fact, sections of this book read acutely like non-fiction; as if Stross hasn't only created multiple worlds here and linked them together, but he has also enlisted us into his spy game and feels the need to brief us on our next mission.

To over-condense the setup to a ridiculous degree, there is a set of divergent timelines and they've got to the point of warring with each other. Time Line One is where the merchant princes come from because a particular gene allows some of them to worldwalk. They did very well hopping over to more recognisable timelines, doing business and hopping back home again. Sadly, the Clan also detonated a nuclear device in the White House in Time Line Two, which is when it diverged from our world. Once Two learned about One, the Americans nuked them in return, meaning that most of One is now in an abiding nuclear winter.

So we're focused on Timelines Two and Three. Three is technologically behind Two by quite a margin, but some good guys from One worldwalked over there a while back and have been working diligently to catch them up before Two notices that Three exists. Of course, just to complicate everything, we're given tantalising personal connections. The primary architect of Three's technological advancement had a daughter in Two, who was given up for adoption. She's now the primary spy Two has to explore Three, not that she knows much about her family history. And not that her masters know much about her other family history. This gets very complex and I'm not going to go into everything.

What I will say is that this continues the stories of various key players immediately from the finale of the first book. Rita Douglas is that spy and Miriam Beckstein is her mother and they now know each other exists, which complicates all the diplomacy that really starts to manifest seriously in this one. However, there's a further complicating factor that I don't recall in the slightest from the first book, so I'm hoping it's new and I didn't just forget everything about it.

This is Princess Elizabeth Hanover, the heir to John Frederick, King-in-Exile of the British Empire over in Time Line Three. If you care particularly about when and how this time line diverged from ours, I'd recommend checking out the Appendix, a substantial (25 pages) briefing on the political history that led to the foundation of the New American Commonwealth. Long story short, the UK is run by France and the British Empire is run in exile from the east coast of North America. Princess Elizabeth is to be married off to the Dauphin and she doesn't like the idea in the slightest, so she's going to defect and that'll shake up everything.

Clearly, Princess Elizabeth is going to be massively important to this series but, two thirds of the way through it, we're still in setup mode, so I really don't know how Stross is going to play things on out. I should mention here that it's notable that all the people in charge are white men: the First Man, the Dauphin, the King in Exile and so on, but all the key players are women: Rita, Elizabeth, Miriam, Olga and so on, not all of them white either. Certain heritages do shake up some societies and that's quite fun to watch. In fact, all of this is fun to watch, but it's sometimes hard to focus on the fun when we're confronted with info dumps to keep us current.

I have to admit that I don't envy the job Stross has set himself. He didn't just create one world, with a level of socio-political alternate history complexity that boggles the mind, he created multiples, each with their own histories, and connected them. In fact, I started to panic a few chapters in when people start talking about Time Line Twelve and Time Line Seventy-Three and how the heck am I going to be able to keep all these straight? By page 49, there are 284 timelines known to Time Line Three, 251 of which are safe.

I should add that Time Line Two knows about others as well, especially given their wild base on Time Line Four, a timeline otherwise unpopulated but with curious relics that surely must play their part in the third book. And we follow characters whose jobs are to find more timelines. Maybe Time Line Two is suffering from a Timeline Gap that may help mitigate the technological advantage they have over Time Line Three. Are we seeing a colonial age of expansion through timeline exploration? Answers at your local bookclub soon.

I don't want to go into much detail about individual stories here because, quite frankly, I'm unsure at this point what counts as a spoiler and what doesn't, and because I should have written up my notes a month earlier when I actually read the book rather than now, because I've lost track of what may be important and what may not. Given how that applied very much to remembering the first book too, I should mention that it didn't seem difficult to dive into book two and let memory fill in gaps from the previous volume as it went. I just wish I knew where we're going, because I feel like I've studied for an exam and I don't know which 90% of the knowledge I picked up I can safely forget yet.

Book three is 'Invisible Sun', which I have ready to go but which annoyingly isn't going to see release until September, so I have to wait. I want to read it in March and wrap this trilogy up, but I'll have to get closer to the release date and hope it's as easy to slide into the third book as it was the second. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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