Charles Stross. (2018). Dark State: A Novel of the Merchant Princes Multiverse (Empire Games, Book II). Tor Publishing Group.

Charles Stross. 2018. Dark State: A Novel of the Merchant Princes Multiverse (Empire Games, Book II). Tor Publishing Group.

Charles Stross, Dark State: A Novel of the Merchant Princes Multiverse (Empire Games, Book II). Tor Publishing Group, 2018.

Charles Stross. Dark State: A Novel of the Merchant Princes Multiverse (Empire Games, Book II). Tor Publishing Group, 2018.

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     CHARLES STROSS (he/him) is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has won three Hugo Awards for Best Novella, including for the Laundry Files tale "Equoid." His work has been translated into over twelve languages. His novels include the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry series (including Locus Award finalist The Dilirium Brief), and several stand-alones including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn's Children.
     Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped catastrophes, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stakeout) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing, he tried to change employers just as the bubble burst) to technical writer and prolific journalist covering the IT industry. Along the way he collected degrees in pharmacy and computer science, making him the world's first officially qualified cyberpunk writer.

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title

Dark State

fullDescription

Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross dives deep into the underbelly of paratime espionage, nuclear warfare, and state surveillance in this provocative techno-thriller set in The Merchant Princes multi-verse

Dark State ups the ante on the already volatile situations laid out in the sleek techno-thriller Empire Games, the start to Stross' new story-line, and perfect entry point for new readers, in The Merchant Princes series.
In the near-future, the collision of two nuclear superpowers across timelines, one in the midst of a technological revolution and the other a hyper-police state, is imminent. In Commissioner Miriam Burgeson's timeline, her top level agents run a high risk extraction of a major political player. Meanwhile, a sleeper cell activated in Rita's, the Commissioner's adopted daughter and newly-minted spy, timeline threatens to unravel everything.
With a penchant for intricate world-building and an uncanny ability to realize alternate history and technological speculation, Stross' writing will captivate any reader who's a fan hi-tech thrillers, inter-dimensional political intrigue, and espionage.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus, starred review, on Dark State
   • content:

     "A nightmarish clash of arms, politics, and wills... Tension crackles from every page.... Sheer brilliance: when Stross is in this mood, nobody else comes close."

2. • premium: False
   • source: The Wall Street Journal on Empire Games
   • content: "No one beats [Stross] at hypertech."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Michael Flynn on Empire Games
   • content: "A well-written book, full of mystery and intrigue, with entire worlds at stake."
4. • premium: False
   • source: The Times (London) on Charles Stross
   • content: "If imagination is the key to success for a writer, Charles Stross has it in spades."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author
   • content: "Charles Stross's Merchant Princes novels are economic science fiction worth reading."
6. • premium: False
   • source: San Francisco Chronicle
   • content: "Great wit and high suspense."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Locus
   • content: "A festival of ideas in action, fast moving and often very funny."
8. • premium: False
   • source: Interzone

   • content: "A rollicking, pacy read that delivers on the fun."
9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 18, 2017
     In Stross’s middling second Empire Games novel (after Empire Games), plots don’t just thicken; they proliferate and snarl in each other like weeds. In the year 2020 in Timeline Two, a world somewhat like ours, U.S. spies have recruited Rita Douglas, the estranged daughter of intertemporal spy extraordinaire Miriam Burgeson. Having failed to infiltrate Timeline Three’s North American Commonwealth (which only freed itself from the British monarchy in 2003), Rita returns to the unfriendly embrace of her handlers with a message from Miriam: open diplomatic relations between the timelines, or face another war. But the Commonwealth has its own problems—the head of its government is terminally ill, and his death will trigger the country’s first succession crisis. Hoping to solidify their position against other factions, the worldwalkers who move between timelines hope to pull off a diplomatic coup: helping Princess Elizabeth Hanover defect from Britain to the Commonwealth. When these plans go awry, Rita is pulled even deeper into the machinations of two timelines, trying to prevent a war that threatens to consume them all. Stross writes with passion and ease about both human and technological spycraft, and his characters remain intriguing and sympathetic. The story, however, feels like a placeholder for the next book, and finishes with an unsatisfying cliff-hanger. Agent: Caitlin Blasdell, Liza Dawson Associates.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from December 15, 2017
      What sets Hugo-winner Stross' (Empire Games, 2017) engaging series apart from other technothrillers is the omniscient point of view that plays no favorites. There are no bad people, just bad decisions. Miriam Beckstein, original protagonist of the series, has made way for long-lost daughter Rita Douglas, who is now an uncomfortable go-between for the advanced police state that is the U.S. and the Commonwealth, for which Miriam is championing a new form of democracy. Rita's adoptive grandfather, Kurt, trained Rita in spycraft from an early age, never suspecting she would actually become a spy. Miriam's colleagues are involved in a plot to help a princess defect, which would be a distinct diplomatic advantage for the Commonwealth. It's a huge risk, and Colonel Smith, Rita's superior, is attempting to interfere with it. Smith is also investigating a way to explore other worlds while avoiding awakening the Forerunners, a dangerous ancient race. Complexly plotted and with characters to match, Dark State exceeds the promise of Empire Games and points toward an exhilarating conclusion around this same time next year.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from December 1, 2017
      This sequel to Empire Games (2017), set in the same world as Stross' Merchant Princes series, plunges us deep into a nightmarish clash of arms, politics, and wills between near-future governments in alternate timelines.In timeline No. 2, which chillingly resembles our own, the United States has morphed into a full-blown police state in which surveillance is universal and inescapable and the paranoid powers that be are willing to use, and have used, nuclear weapons to achieve their aims. Timeline No. 3 presents a bizarre fun-house-mirror world in which the U.S. never existed; instead, a corrupt, despotic British empire persisted until its recent overthrow by the revolutionary, democratic New American Commonwealth. The U.S. desperately wants to learn what's happening in this less technologically advanced but nuclear-armed timeline, so the Department of Homeland Security's Col. Smith coerces people, called world-walkers, who possess the ability to cross between timelines, into becoming spies. Critically, recruit Rita Douglas happens to be the estranged daughter of Commonwealth biggie Miriam Burgeson, herself a refugee from the radioactive wasteland of timeline No. 1 and now guiding the rapid development of the Commonwealth with technology purloined from the U.S. The Commonwealth faces challenges from counterrevolutionaries and the huge, powerful French empire, while the U.S., terrified of nuclear weapons in any hands but its own, probes yet another timeline where the hostile remnants of a still more advanced civilization lurk. Tension crackles from every page as readers grapple with the horrifying sociological and political implications, the looming threat of another intra-time nuclear war, and the fates of individual characters embroiled in disturbing intrigues. Even the fact that every scenario ends in a cliffhanger isn't too annoying given the enormous care and skill Stross expends on getting the details right and rendering meticulous accounts of complex, intersecting events. Not to mention the real-world implications.Sheer brilliance: when Stross is in this mood, nobody else comes close.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross dives deep into the underbelly of paratime espionage, nuclear warfare, and state surveillance in this provocative techno-thriller set in The Merchant Princes multi-verse

Dark State ups the ante on the already volatile situations laid out in the sleek techno-thriller Empire Games, the start to Stross' new story-line, and perfect entry point for new readers, in The Merchant Princes series.
In the near-future, the collision of two nuclear superpowers across timelines, one in the midst of a technological revolution and the other a hyper-police state, is imminent. In Commissioner Miriam Burgeson's timeline, her top level agents run a high risk extraction of a major political player. Meanwhile, a sleeper cell activated in Rita's, the Commissioner's adopted daughter and newly-minted spy, timeline threatens to unravel everything.
With a penchant for intricate world-building and an uncanny ability to...

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