The Merchants' War

The Merchants' War (#753) is the fourth book in Charles Stross' s fantasy series The Merchant Princes.  The saga centers on Miriam Beckstein, a business journalist from Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose everyday existence is upended when she discovers her ability to walk between alternative universes in the same geographical location.   The new world she finds is peopled by medieval knights on horseback armed with machine guns, and ruled by powerful feudal lords.  Oh, and Miriam is a long-lost heiress of one of the richest Clans.  They've amassed their wealth by sending other "world-walkers" to Miriam's Boston to smuggle drugs, arms and modern conveniences for their own use back to the medieval Gruinmakt.  You have to know all this before you can read The Merchants' War, which makes this a perfect series for binge reading, because Charles Stross ends each book on a cliffhanger, and jumps immediately back into the action with the next installment with no back story to aid the clueless.

In this book Miriam has survived plots against her life, and has made a few discoveries of her own; namely that there is yet another alternative universe out there with its own plots and political maneuverings.  All Miriam wants at this point is to find a place where she can be safe, but she now has enemies in all three universes.  On the plus side, she's made some friends and allies as well.  Which is just as well, since the DEA in Miriam's Boston is about to launch a full out offensive against the Gruinmakt  as retaliation for planting nuclear warheads there.  Things are not going well...  To Be Continued.

I am really enjoying this series my husband introduced to me, but I do have a nitpick; although Stross gets the geographical details of the Boston area mostly right, Miriam Beckstein was raised in Cambridge, and works there professionally.  Her ex-boyfriend, Mike Fleming, who pops up in the series because of his government job, is also from the area.  So my question is, why do they Brit Speak?    They don't speak American English, not even tinged by a Boston accent.  They "go on holiday', put their cars in the "car park", ride the "lift" in their office buildings while waiting for a signal on their "mobiles".  And darn, they left that "anorak" in the "boot" of their car!  I have to admit, anachronisms bother me when I read historical fiction, or watch period dramas, so the wrongness of Miriam's conversations is very jarring.  It makes me wonder what else is wrong with this picture?  It's a good thing that the Miriam's alternative worlds don't need verification!