The Family Trade is probably best described as a unusual take on the usual sort of crossover story. The heroine, a trade journalist who has just uncovered the details of a massive money laundering scheme, finds herself at loose ends when her magazine’s ownership turns out to be involved. As if avoiding the goodfellas and finding a new job wasn’t enough to worry about, her adoptive parents finally reveal the details of her birth family, along with her mother’s personal effects and newspaper articles suggesting she was murdered, with a sword, in the middle of a 20th century city.
Something doesn’t quite add up, and the key may be the strange silver locket left around her mother’s neck, a locket that just might represent a gate between worlds; a gate that only Miram’s family can use. But there’s more to families than just parents, and the rest of Miram’s relatives won’t welcome interference in their enterprise.
Unlike the vast majority of crossover novels, this one has some serious meat to it. Rather than dumping the heros from one world into another and forcing them to quest for a portal back, in this world going back and forth is easy enough. In fact, it’s the basis of a thriving import/export business. The implications of individuals capable of moving between worlds at will are well and truly explored, making this novel more of a science fiction exploration of ideas than a fantasy escape.
While written smoothly and without glaring flaws in the plotting, it does have the usual problems for a science fiction novel: minor characters are not especially well defined, and the book serves mainly as an introduction to the mileu which will be explored in sequels. Supposedly the sequels will attempt to apply the economic principles of capitalism to a medieval economy based on the trade of ideas and goods between the worlds. It’s an interesting idea and I’ll probably pick it up (the sequel is already out).
But don’t expect this volume to be more than a novel-length teaser.
