The Family Trade
This is the highly enjoyable first volume of Stross’ fantasy epic The Merchant Princes. Which, if Stross himself is to be believed, was intended to be a fat trilogy, but after the publisher decided they wanted to print slimmer books, will now stretch to ten or twelve volumes!
The book follows Miriam Beckstein, a tech journalist, as she discovers that she is a high ranking member of a clan of ‘world walkers’ and thrust into a world of intrigue, politics and cold-blooded murder.
As with all multi-volume fantasy series my recommendation is to wait until the whole thing is out to read unless you want to suffer from extreme frustration (curse you Robert Jordan!). If you can’t wait, well it’s a damn good read.