2011 Book Review #45: The Family Trade

[jethrien]

Title: The Family Trade
Author: Charles Stross
Genre: Modern world crosses over with medieval fantasy (first in series)
Thingummies: 2
Synopsis: Investigative reporter Miriam Beckstein loses her job when she digs too deep. But that's nowhere near as shocking as when she accidentally crosses over into a feudal, undeveloped version of America. It turns out that those those money launderers she had been investigating have nothing on her own long-lost relatives. She's suddenly a countess in a family that would put both the mob and the Medicis to shame. To survive, she'll have to beat them at their own game. Which she won't do in this book, because the author didn't bother to write a damn ending.

Thoughts: I've got really mixed feelings about this book.

I'll be honest, I only picked it up because I'd wanted to read Stross' The Atrocity Archives, the library didn't have it, and all they had of his that was not the middle of a series was this.

I started out skeptical. The whole "modern person accidentally stumbles into a medieval world, hilary/terror ensues" trope has been done to death. I used to really like it, but I've subsequently gotten bored. I kept reading at all because I've read some of Stross' short fiction and had been impressed, and so was willing to extend him the benefit of the doubt.

I was pleasantly rewarded. He does a really good job of actually exploring the economic and political ramifications of a family that can cross between parallel dimensions of uneven technological development. In most of these, it's a one way trip, or only the hero can go back and forth. Usually, you have the obligatory goggling at culture clash, the protagonist becomes a king or something, and spends the rest of his or her days ruling wisely and occasionally taking a jaunt home for pizza.

Here, the family has worked out a complex mercantile system, using their powers to generate income from the import/export business and from using our side's transportation system as a way of couriering across obstacles. Many of the people Miriam talks to know perfectly well what a cell phone is. Ramifications for defense, luxury items, interactions with the CIA and the DEA, etc. are already thought of and taken as a given. You get to skip a lot of the "ha ha, superstitious ignorant people are ignorant" stuff that wears so thin. It's all very well thought out, relatively fresh, and enjoyable.

Until I got near the end. And, with a sinking heart, realized that there was no way that he was going to wrap up his plot before he ran out of pages. Now, I knew it was the beginning of a series. But, customarily, one has a mini-arc that wraps up in the first book while laying the groundwork for later books. Not here. No, he doesn't bother to wrap up anything. In fact, entire scenes happen with sets of characters you never see before or after that have exactly zero relevance to the "plot" of this book. Clearly they're supposed to be important later. But I'm skeptical that any reader is going to remember the details of a conversation between two code-named couriers that's completely unrelated to the events in the current novel when it becomes relevant three books down the line.

Basically, this is a third of a very good novel, and I'm pissed. If I'd paid money for it, I'd be livid. There is no arc, there is no conclusion, there is nothing that makes the last ten pages any different from ten pages in the middle. It's cheating. I honestly don't know whether I want to read any more of these books. On one hand, I was totally engaged with the story and I want to know what happens. On the other--what assurance do I have that it's ever going to wrap up? Even Robert Jordan would have some kind of climax and resolution in each book, even if the overall myth arc was completely unresolved. This is a teaser, not a book. It's not even like it's exhaustively long and his editor cut him off so they wouldn't have a 5000 page tome. It's slim. Basically, for whatever reason, he didn't bother to finish writing the damn book before sending it to press, and wants you to pay again to get the rest of it.

Shame on you, Stross.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Man, and with that premise, you know I'd love it.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

From the wiki page:
The second book in the series is The Hidden Family (2005); these two were originally written as one novel.

So if you read that one, let me know if it has an ending? Cause the premise really does sound like my cuppa.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Ah. Maybe it's the publisher's fault, then.

I'm not going to spend money on it. But if the library has it, I'll consider changing the rating retroactively.

[elissali.livejournal.com]

my memory is dim, but isn't there something like this in Lord of the Rings? Where some of the plots end abruptly?

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but at least it's after a substantial amount of book--you can see how the publisher would say, "Ok, this is too long." This is really short. The full book would probably be a normal length.