Charlie Stross’s “Merchant Princes” series– a sly, action-packed romp that blends heroic fantasy, military science fiction, economics, politics, and alternate worlds — originally published as six mass-market paperbacks, is now available in three handy trade-paperbacks.
There’s a third trilogy that Tor will start publishing in 2016. These books are so surprising and delightful, simultaneously zippy and fun and hefty and deep. Stross has found, in heroic fantasy, the perfect vehicle for talking about power, economics, and authoritarianism. It’s a very sneaky story, and it’s perfectly great.