“The Hidden Family,” by Charles Stross (Tor, 303 pages, $24.95)
Charles Stross brings info-tech philosophy to the world of fantasy. It’s fantasy because magic amulets instead of a quantum-probability destabilization gizmo are used to travel between worlds.
Miriam Beckstein is an investigative journalist who has to confront her real identity as the long-lost Countess Helge in an alternate timeline from the Middle Ages. It’s a medieval world with mounted knights whose fierceness is dramatically increased by the machine guns they carry.
Miriam is a lost daughter of the Clan. Her uncle wants to introduce her into the family business, which uses their special talent with the world-shifting amulets to bring wealth from one world to the other and create untraceable trails for their criminal activity in our world.
Miriam upsets the power structure and several forces are out to do her harm. “The Family Trade” (Tor, 308 pages, $6.99) introduced her to a new world while in “The Hidden Family” she sets out to change it with a vengeance.
She has found a third world to make her mark in and wants to bring a new business paradigm to mercantilism and upset the status quo. Stross tells the story with gusto as Miriam launches a high-tech startup in a low-tech world that is not ready for an independent woman. In each world those who can adapt to change will be the most successful. Miriam is a master of this, although it takes a toll.
“The Hidden Family” concludes what was originally one novel. I missed “The Family Trade” when it came out in hardcover last year but picked up the paperback and it was a treat reading the two parts back to back. Stories unfold across three worlds that are brought to life with humor-laced action.
“November Mourns,” by Tom Piccirilli (Bantam, 281 pages, $5.99)
Colorado author Tom Piccirilli is the master of the Southern gothic, quietly building horror where the chills grow with increasing strangeness.
When Shad Jenkins gets out of prison he returns to Moon Run Hollow to find out how his sister died. She was found with no obvious cause of death on a road everyone has grown up learning to avoid.
Shad went to prison for beating up the man who attacked his sister. This kind of violence is unusual for a place where law-breaking is a cat-and-mouse game of sneaking past the police with a haul of moonshine. Selling moonshine is the leading (and only) local industry.
Shad is a plodding detective but perseveres with visions of his dead sister leading him on. He has always had visions of death and must confront them on a ridge with a long history of death from war and disease.
Piccirilli brings all his secondary characters to life. The inbred couple with a brood of deformed babies are made sympathetic. The snake-handling cult is eager to welcome Shad into its midst. When Piccirilli is done, the uneasy horrors of Moon Run Hollow are in your bones.
“The Hallowed Hunt,” by Lois McMaster Bujold (Eos, 470 pages,$24.95)
Lois McMaster Bujold won the most recent Hugo and Nebula awards for the previous novel in her fantasy world of five gods. “The Hallowed Hunt” is not a sequel, but rather is set in the same world with different characters at a different time.
Lord Ingrey’s assignment is to return the body of Prince Boleso to the capital along with the woman accused of murdering him. Lady Ijada killed him in self-defense, but that’s not sufficient defense when killing a prince. She kept herself from being a ritual sacrifice but it has also left her with an unwanted animal spirit inside her.
Ingrey’s job is to deliver Lady Ijada safely to trial. When he tries to kill her, he thinks it’s the wolf spirit he has carried and repressed since childhood. Ijada and a sorceress can see it’s not the wolf but a spell placed on him.
The king is near death and Ingrey and Ijada are being used in the game of succession, a conspiracy that goes back for generations. Ingrey must learn to accept his nature and find a way to protect the royal killer he has fallen in love with.
Expectations are always high with a Bujold novel. “The Hallowed Hunt” doesn’t reach the level of “Paladin of Souls.” By more mortal standards, her latest fantasy novel is inventive with engaging characters and lively story telling.
Fred Cleaver writes a monthly column on new science fiction releases.
