Review of Invisible Sun (Empire Games Book 3)

I just finished reading Invisible Sun (Empire Games Book 3) by Charles Stross.📚

Invisible Sun is the last book in the alternate history series by Charles Stross. Three state actors, each having nuclear capabilities, pitched against one another. The stakes could not be higher. And on top, a new as of yet unknown non-human opponent. Will the people at the buttons keep a cool head and talk first instead of pushing the buttons? Will Rita be able to solve the misunderstandings before it is too late?

Opinion

Please note that from here on out, the text can contain spoilers of the book.

I waited a long time for the conclusion of this series.  I was so happy when I found out that Stross wrote more in his Merchant Prince’s universe. I still think that this series is one of the best executed parallel world series.

I’m curious how this single book will finish and clean up all the loose ends with only 300 pages. I think the author did quite well here, but part of the ending felt a bit rushed. For example, I would have loved to get a scene with a reaction of the pretended prince about his daughter’s speech. And he could have removed some of the repetition of facts. It felt like the story was written to be published in different books and was just concatenated together without editing the parts.

So enough of the bad stuff, I liked this book, and I think it is an excellent ending to the series. One part which stood out to me was how the French perspective is shown and how they both don’t understand what you can do in timeline two. I think the quote summarized this quite well:

“Yes, well.” Louis Philippe stopped pacing. “Maybe I am advocating for Satan a little too zealously. But I think it is clear that if she was taken to another world, and popped up in New London so rapidly, then the powers in that world must be helping the Commonwealth. It takes immense resources to organize a high-speed flight between continents. Someone is smoothing the way for her kidnappers.”

Another highlight was the juggernaut subplot, which could fill an entire book on its own. It is such a fabulous idea by Stross. And to realize that with world walking capability, you can use this old concept. And the defection plot with the princess. At one point, I did not want to read further as I feared for the lives of characters I love. Luckily my worst fears did not come true. In timeline two (our timeline), the actors are not as insane as earlier in the series – actually, the president sounds relatively sane.

I liked how all the storylines converged together into one point. And that the parties started talking with each other instead of assuming the worst of each other; I like that we got a happy ending – something I did not expect going into the book. I’m a bit sad that this is the final book in this universe. There are so many stories still in there, which I would love to read about. I highly recommend the whole series to everybody interested in alternate history stories.

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• /empire-games
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