Invisible Sun

Paperback, 400 pages

Published July 19, 2022 by Tor Books.

ISBN:
978-1-250-80710-6
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4 stars (7 reviews)

The alternate timelines of Charles Stross's Empire Games trilogy have never been so entangled as in Invisible Sun , the techno-thriller follow up to Dark State , as stakes escalate in a conflict that could spell extermination for humanity across all known timelines. Two twin worlds are waiting for war. America is caught in a deadly arms race with the USA, its high-tech, parallel world. Yet it might just self-combust first. For its president-equivalent has died, leaving a crippling power vacuum. Without the First Man's support, Miriam Burgeson faces a paranoid government opponent who he suspects of scheming to resurrect the American monarchy. And Miriam is indeed helping the exiled American princess. This is only to prevent her being used against America, but her rivals will twist anything to ruin her. However, all factions will face a disaster bigger than anything they could imagine. In their drive to explore other …

5 editions

Sometimes, taking your premise and running with it is all that is needed

3 stars

Stross’ Merchant Princes series, of which the Empire Games trilogy this concludes is a part, is a poster child for this principle: assuming there are parallel Earth timelines in which development of society (and life, at times) wildly varies, what happens when one technologically less advanced line discovers it can travel to a more advanced one? Start with a knight armed with a submachine gun attacking your hapless protagonist, and take it from there until you arrive at transtemporal nuclear powered space battleships parked on the ISS’ lawn.

If you think this sounds like a silly, incoherent mess, you can be forgiven: in the hands of a lesser author, it easily might have been. What saves Stross are his well rounded characters and an ironclad grasp of what plotting individual arcs along the basic workings of society and history means. Add complex, richly textured world building, a healthy dose of …

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