Invisible Sun (Empire Games Book 3)

Thoughtfully written. Well formed characters. Good plot. Read in sequence.

I greatly respect the author, Charlie Stross, and I know how everything went seriously wrong as he repeatedly tried to finish writing this difficult concluding novel. So I don't want to be too critical. Invisible Sun does succeed in wrapping up his extremely compelling Merchant Princess series. Which means that I'd still give the series, as a whole an enthusiastic 5 star recommendation! :-)However... What I like most about Stross's books is that they usually start in the action and roll pretty well. What I hate is repetition. That was unfortunately a big aspect that stopped me reading his Laundry universe novels - regurgitated spiel that was innovative genius in the first book, but tired by the 4th. Invisible Sun spends the first 25% of its length re-establishing the main characters and summarising the events of the previous novels, repeatedly. Then there's one little bit of action, which is again chewed over. So it wasn't until around 45% through that the plot actually started to flow for me...I guess each book needs to stand on its own, to an extent. And it will have been a few years for most fans, since reading the last, while I came very late and read them all together at the start of last year. But I really felt that even someone who (bizarrely) started reading the series from this last book, would have felt that certain things were laboured too much! Yes, we know they nuked the entire Guinmarkt!In my Kindle version, there were an uncharacteristically large number of typos, too. About a dozen in the opening third. Like it had been re-written and copy-checked in haste. Distracting; a couple totally changed the meaning. Including one in the up-front glossary of characters, that incorrectly stated who was married to whom and had me scratching my head. On Twitter, Stross partly responded to me, suggesting reporting such things to the publisher. *NOT* marking them as error in the eBook, as that can only cause the book to be pulled and loose the author time and money.In terms of plot, there was nothing too surprising to me. It felt very safe. Almost fan-service. I was kinda disappointed there weren't more developments with the aliens; it ultimately just used a couple chapters of straight up exposition to explain exactly the history of the universes. Which read, to me, kind of like author's background notes, pasted straight in. And again, the second one summarised some things already stated in the first, and overall didn't really change my understanding from the previous novels. (Though did make plain one axiomatic plot hole.) Like, he REALLY wanted to make sure every last reader understood exactly what had transpired...One of the main characters, Dr Scanton, also read like an author's mouthpiece at times. While a primary antagonist from the previous book, the Commonwealth's Party Secretary, who I was looking forwards to seeing how his meddling played out, was entirely written out of the book. Off camera, so to speak, like an actor who died between TV seasons. I guess there wasn't time to explore him, or events didn't play out well with him involved. It was anti-climatic that the main villains were characters I didn't remember, or weren't even properly introduced previously.It seemed that the suspense of the extraction plot-line was also deliberately dialled all the way back, too, by (oddly) structuring the chapters such that the reader already knew the outcome before the antagonists section. Not quite hitting the more exiting balance delivered during equivalent exciting action events towards the middle of the series.Ultimately, things are capped off in Holywood action blockbuster style. Which I guess is fun, though felt implausible, given only a shaky justification (via exposition) as to why it might just work.So, in summary, Invisible Sun was nothing like the abomination of the end of the last season of Game of Thrones (TV show). Not awful at all! It hit a reasonable mark and stayed upright, but was just inelegant.

Charles Stross ties up the many threads of the 'Family Trade' series in suitably impressive and satisfying style. The final installment of this trilogy of trilogies, which began as a world walking fantasy and morphed into science-fiction, political thriller and espionage drama finishes up in spectacular full space opera mode in a multiverse of parallel timelines, complete with a space battle and multiple ravenning nuclear fireballs.This volume brings to a close the story arc of Miriam Burgeson (nee Beckstein) as she and her family and connections as they contend with managing the defection of a rebel princess, fighting off a counterrevolution and defending against the meddling regime change aims of a paranoid avatar of the US of A. And the potential end of everything from a powerful and pitiless machine civilization, not surprisingly also awakened by the meddling of the aforesaid para-USA.The info dumps describing the machine civilization, and their interactions with the ancestors of timeline-hopping humanoids is the weakest part of the story. Rather dry, but blessedly brief. They are necessary to the storyline though.But the edge of seat chase for the rebel princess in the streets of para-Berlin and the blow by blow pacing of the counter-revolution in the Commonwealth timeline are artfully staged, and beautifully realized.More stories in the setting are possible, but Stross does not intend to reuse the existing cast of characters.

Invisible Sun is the third and final part to the Empire Games trilogy and, to be honest, it was a bit of a let down. The whole series' main story strand - the ongoing cold war / espionage between the opposing parallel dimensions of 'time line 2' (a dimension much like our own) and 'time line 3' (the parallel dimension of the New American Commonwealth) is handled well enough. But, throughout the two previous novels, there have been hints of the dangers of inter-dimensional travel and powerful forces lurking if you journey too far. Book 2 of the trilogy really set this up as a major new story strand. However, Invisible Sun spends most of it's time with the conflict between the time lines saga, leaving the alien threat story very much in second place. I couldn't understand why there was so much time spent setting this story strand up just to leave it run out of space. It feels to me like either the book needed to be quite a bit longer, or there should be a fourth novel. Not a bad trilogy, on the whole, it just felt like the author wanted to finish it quickly at the end.

A good sixth book in the Merchant Princes series - I enjoyed reading it, although it's a shame there doesn't seem to be much chance of more volumes . . .This book is roughly twice the length of "Empire Games" vols 1 and 2, so well worth its price. It includes some much-appreciated 'backstory', too.

A book I both wanted to savour and to read quickly. The end of my favourite series of Charles Stross books, and a very satisfying one as well.This is told in scenes following various characters, and as each scene changed, I was cross to have that subplot curtailed. Then I would get into the next one and have the same experience. But that is far from a criticism. Rather it is a sign of how much I was enjoying the journey.This is not the place for a newcomer to the series to start, but if you are a newcomer, get hold of book 1 of the Merchant Princes as soon as you can.

No book including the offspring of Project Orion could be bad, but throwing away a good idea in the face of authorial ennui is looking like a bug in Charles Stross’ operating system. We have lost the Eschaton, the spies of the Laundry and, now, the Burgeson clan and a proper story of the Swarm…