It's 2020, and two women find themselves on opposite sides of a clash that spans multiple alternate timelines.

Miriam is the head of an espionage agency that's set to bring about the Commonwealth's great leap forward in technology and culture. She's been telling everyone for years that the Americans will bring their drones and technology soon--and they do, just when the leader of the Commonwealth is dying.

Her daughter Miriam is in another timeline, recruited by the U.S. to spy across timelines, hunting down any remaining world-walkers that could threaten national security.

Stross has always been a deft hand at intricate plotting and far future intrigue. This is a start of a new series that's well worth following, if the next books are as good as this one. He balances character and complex plot well, resulting in rich story and world building about characters we can easily be interested in.

I have left a large chunk out of the very chatty blurb because if you haven’t read the Merchant Princes series then the names aren’t going to mean all that much, anyway and I think it’s far too much information that you’ll learn more effectively once you read the book. That said, this is a spin-off series from the Merchant Princes series, which is a portal worlds thriller. I’ve only read a couple books in this series, but found them thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing which was why I requested Empire Games. This epic storyline is spread across multiple worlds, so it takes some concentration to work out what is happening to whom and sadly, the preview extract I had sent was a misery to read. It’s been a while since I’ve had to slog through anything so appallingly formatted, with a binary thingy of zeroes and ones randomly appearing throughout the text and words being split across lines numerous times – I don’t think there was a single page where the text was correctly formatted.

If it hadn’t been a NetGalley preview, it would have gone winging across the room. I had a pre-migraine headache blow up on me later during the day I’d been battling through this ‘mare of a read and I’m not sure the two aren’t connected. I’ve made a promise to myself that it’s the last time I trudge through anything so egregiously messed up, anyway.

There was a lot of information to impart and just as the story was starting to gather pace and I was beginning to care – it all came to an end. Obviously I cannot comment on the characterisation, the pacing, the plotting or how satisfactorily the story ends. But it’s out there and given that Stross is an able storyteller, it should be good.