Book review: The Family Trade

[aelfgyfu_mead]

So! I wanted something entertaining, so Brilliant Husband recommended The Family Trade, Book One of The Merchant Princes. I was a little leery of Charles Stross because he hadn't exactly covered himself in glory in RaceFail (yes, that is an example of litotes); I can no longer remember exactly what Stross said or just how far down his throat he'd rammed his foot, or leg, or whatever. However, as many of you know, I read work by rapists (Malory, Le Morte Darthur), possible rapists (Chaucer, and we'll never know if he did or didn't), and some people who are just plain mean (Harlan Ellison, although I stumbled across David Gerrold defending him as a kind and generous man; that side may exist, I just haven't seen it).

So I read The Family Trade, and now I am Annoyed. I'll put in two cuts: one for a review with relatively few spoilers, and one with lots of spoilers because if you can explain anything I didn't get or help me appreciate the book more than I did, that would probably make me happier.


Review
The Family Trade had its good points and its bad points, but it's the bad ones that really stick with me right now. I do not like reading a book thinking that it's the first in a series but self-contained and finding that it is not actually self-contained at all, but I need to read more books if what I just read is to make sense or come to some kind of a conclusion. Part of this is BH's fault, he admits: he seems to have misremembered where this book ended, so that when I asked if I'd get closure if I continued, he said yes.

Of course, the fact that I asked him if I should even continue indicates I had problems early on.

I must give credit where credit is due: Stross does create characters I care about--almost enough to read more, but perhaps not quite. He writes a strong female protagonist who is often convincing, and she has a good relationship with her mother and becomes close to a female friend partly through bad luck. Yes, this is characterization to be celebrated in SF&F.

Stross's world-building interested me more than his characters, though. In a very Zelazny vein (and the back jacket flap compares him to Zelazy), he creates an alternate world that certain people can reach by means of something visual. Miriam Beckstein is in our world (or near as makes no difference) but discovers that that's not actually where she began. She has known all along that her parents were not her biological parents, and a little of what happened to her mother--a Jane Doe. The other world is sort of medieval (which is, of course, A Bad Thing--poor hygiene, death and disease, oppressed peasants, the whole nine yards, but not as funny as Monty Python). Miriam has a lot of trouble getting her head around this new world, and well she should!

Stross also does a nice twist on the Cinderella story, which I really appreciate as someone who has had a little too much Disney World the past couple of years. Maybe you don't want to find out you're really adopted, and your real mother is. . . .

Yet I have problems with this novel. I like Miriam when she's being a professional woman, or even just a person, a human being, with other women. When we add men to the mix, heaven help us. Certain male characters felt curiously flat to me, which made it even worse that I could not understand why Miriam took a particular interest in one of them. It felt like Stargate! We're all fine until somebody tries to throw in a little romance, and then watch out!

Romance wasn't the only problem, though. Miriam makes some dumb mistakes, and they annoy the dren out of me. Yes, even smart women can make mistakes, but one in particular boggled my mind. Also, we get a fair amount of exposition through dialogue, and it got really tedious near the end of the book: things are heating up, and we get a six-page discussion of economics and business plans? Surely you jest!

Perhaps the most deeply troubling part was a fairly minor part, in some sense. The characters in the AU are overwhelmingly white in the area where Miriam goes. All references to people of other races are negative. The characters who refer to Chinese as "slant-eyes" are probably reprehensible, and that should not be taken as an endorsement of the position—but we don't get much more of the Chinese than that. We're told twice that Indian tribes are "murderous", and once that South Africa is "the white man's graveyard." You know, if you truly can't do non-white people right, maybe you are better off not writing them at all--but to have them virtually invisible, but mentioned only in negative ways, is disturbing. I like to think that I'd have noticed this without RaceFail (I certainly noticed omissions and stereotypes long before RaceFail), but RaceFail, and Stross's cameo appearances in it, made his treatment of non-white people completely impossible to ignore.

On a completely minor note: Stross is obviously British. He's writing Americans. He has a lot of usages that aren't American, as far as I know. He could have used a better editor, or one from the States. I know it's hard (even after hestia8 had vetted my my Primeval story, someone else found a couple dozen Americanisms we'd both missed. But hestia8 and I aren't paid to get it right!

Perhaps he does better in other books. I suspect we'll see more of the AU in later books. I'm just not at all sure I want to sink my time into them!

Stop here to avoid spoilers


You've been warned. . . .



Spoilers!
So, have any of you read this book? What did you think? Does it improve enough to make reading more in the series worth my while?

Here are my big peeves in more detail:
I understand Roland less by the end of the novel than I thought I did midway through. If a woman got flattened and then largely dropped out of a story this way, I'd cry sexism! As it is, I am perplexed.
I also have no understanding of what Angbard wants.
I think Matthias is about to pull a coup, and he wants Roland and Miriam back in our world until the dust settles. Roland is out of the way and doesn't have to avenge anything. Is this correct? (Press 1 for yes, 2 for no.)

I was floored when Miriam first slept with Roland. I knew there'd be monitoring devices. I could not believe either Miriam or Roland was that stupid! This mistake grinds me most of all; Roland knows he could be killed for it! Miriam should have thought, too. I'm not convinced the hotel room was smart, either. And I don't know why she slept with him! She seems to start falling in love with him awfully quickly and move on to sex before she's even sure she's in love with him. I don't feel that their scenes together are convincing. I was also put off by the way she called him "love" in the hotel room, though Brilliant Husband is probably right in saying that's not really "I love you forever" but a Britishism, like I might say "honey" to someone I'm not in love with because I've already been in the South too long.

At the end of the book, I'm not certain what has happened or what is happening. I very rarely have this problem. It's possible I missed things; I've had two sick relatives in the past two weeks and a lot on my mind. However, I really don't think I should reach the end of a book with a list of questions as long as this:
1. Who is trying to kill Miriam?
a. The Chinese assassin (see my remarks about race, above) seems to be a big clue that Miriam's hypothesis was right, and the lost son founded another family the Clan don't know about. They're after her. Who are they, and what do they gain by killing her? If they're not trying to kill her, what are they trying to do?
b. Which faction within the Clan is trying to kill her? I feel that by the end of the first book, I should have more clues. I don't even know who the list of suspects is.
2. Why did Angbard make Miriam his heir? She already knows he's using her to see who comes out of the woodwork, but that seems kind of pointless if an assassin succeeds and offs her, without him knowing who did it or why. Does making her the heiress really further his plans in that direction?
3. Is Roland truly on Miriam's side? Or is he just stupid? Actually, this isn't an either/or; I'm leaning towards both/and right now.
4. Is it sheer coincidence Miriam finds the courier on the train at the end of the book, or is he an assassin sent for her? It really seems to be coincidence, and he's not an assassin, but I don't know.
5. What is Miriam's purpose in sending him back to Angbard with no message other than that she was on a train in our world at thus and such a time? Here somebody really did fail: either I failed as a reader to understand something important, or Stross failed as a writer. I've been close enough to Miriam's point of view in this scene and many previous ones that I ought to have some insight into her plan. I have no idea what her plan is beyond getting Brill to Paulie; I think she will then contact Roland, but I'm not certain what happens with that.
6. What's Olga's angle? Does she have someone she prefers to Roland, or just she just see him as old and dumb? a. If the plan to have Olga kill Miriam was a back-up, they were awfully well prepared: he didn't just try Miriam's doors and leave, he came in with money and a sealed order to frame Miriam.
7. What's Miriam's grandmother's angle?

Okay, poll time! Your answers really help only if you've read the book, so maybe nobody will respond.
Dang--attempt to insert poll failed. Go to this entry.