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Empire Games

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Empire Games

By: Charles Stross
Narrated by: Kate Reading
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About this listen

A time of ambition, treachery and dangerous secrets . . .

Rita Douglas is plucked from her dead-end job and trained as a reluctant US spy. All because she has the latent genetic talent to hop between alternate timelines - and infiltrate them. Her United States is waging a high-tech war, targeting assassins who can move between worlds to deliver death on a mass scale, and Rita will be their secret weapon.

Miriam Beckstein has her own mission, as a politician in an industrial revolution US. She must accelerate her world's technology before their paranoid American twin finds them. It would blow them to hell. After all, they've done it before. Each timeline also battles internal conspiracies, as a cold war threatens to turn white hot. But which world is the aggressor - and will Rita have to choose a side?

This new series is set in the same world as Charles Stross' 'Merchant Princes' series.

 Adventure Crime Fiction Genre Fiction Mystery Private Investigators Science Fiction Small Town & Rural Fiction Espionage War Cold War

Critic reviews

Stross's ferociously imaginative world-building is on full display here . . . few other writers can match him for humour, creativity and sheer density of ideas
Shocks, surprises, reversals, and elaborations keep tumbling from Stross's nimble fingers . . . . These books are immense fun
One of the defining phenomena of twenty-first century SF is Charles Stross, for the quality of his work at its best
The keen eye and what-if imagination of Charles Stross fuel a fresh look at alternate worlds
All stars
Most relevant
Very well written. Good narrator who fumbled pronounciation of only few words. Enjoyable listen. Jumping straight to the next part of the series!

Mixing time lines surprisingly easy to follow

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Another high paced mind bending adventure from Stross that adds another welcome thread in his ever expanding world walking universe!

Excellent

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The book gets off to a decent start but finishes part way through the story, not with a cliffhanger just a cut off. It’s really annoying when novels are not self contained works. Readers are just being misused to force them to buy more.

Disappointed

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The idea of multiple timelines is great and the detail around the set up is in depth and well thought through. In short the story has great potential and I really enjoyed it.
At times though it feels like this book could have done with some good editing. For example the author's use of technology even in 2016 feels anachronistic (ironically given the subject matter) - the heroine uses Facebook and other technologies that already feel out of date In the timeline that is supposed to be the reader's. These are only small gripes but they do detract from enjoying the story from time to time.
I struggled with the narrator. I found her performances far too similar amongst the characters and generally found her hard to follow. I am dismayed that she narrates the second book too.

Great story premise. Let down by narration and patchy writing at times.

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