The Bloodline Feud by Charles Stross

The Bloodline Feud: an omnibus edition of the first two novels in Charles Stross's The Merchant Princes series

The six families of the Clan rule the kingdom of Gruinmarkt from behind the scenes. They are a mixture of nobility and criminal conspirators whose power to walk between their world and ours makes them rich in both.

Miriam, a hip tech journalist from Boston, discovers her alternate-world relatives with explosive results that shake three worlds. Now, as the prodigal Countess Helge Thorold-Hjorth, she finds herself ensnared in schemes and plots centuries in the making. She is surrounded by unlikely allies, lethal contraband, and—most dangerous of all—her family.

To avoid a slippery slope down to an unmarked grave, Miriam must build a power base of her own—with unexpected consequences for three different time lines, including the quasi-Victorian one exploited by the hidden family.

I wanted to love this. Really, I did. I likeds Stross' style in his other work that I've read, and the combination of old tropes and new presentation that The Bloodline Feud represented sounded really fantastic. And it wasn't bad? But for the most part it didn't live up to my hopes for it (This is admittedly my fault more than it is the book's).

Looking at it more objectively, the idea behind the story is still fascinating. Protagonist Miriam learns that she's part of a family that knows how to walk between worlds - specifically, one that never developed past mercantilism and another in an imperial Gilded age. Stross uses Miriam's ability to cross worlds to examine those systems, and how they compare to knowledge-based capitalism. While that's an interesting exercise, he's awfully slow on character development at the same time. It takes a good three quarters of the book for his characters to turn into people. This means that by the end of the book you're finally willing to check out a sequel to see what happens to them, so I guess that's a smart marketing decision? Makes for a bit of a feel-bad reading experience, though.

I quite enjoyed The Bloodline Feud. It is great writing and a very good story, but it doesn't fit easily into a genre – call it a sort of a speculative-fiction, techno-thriller, crime-fiction crossover. It is an exciting romp with alternate-Earths, deadly feuds, and a ton of action and intrigue. It actually reminded me quite a lot of Roger Zelazny's Amber books.
(Fair warning: The Bloodline Feud is a re-edited omnibus edition of a story that was originally published as The Family Trade and The Hidden Family.)

Update: Even better on a re-read. I finished it thinking of snarky alternate titles like Miriam in Wonderland and Looking Glass 2.0.