https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-revolution-trade-by-charles-stross/

This is a compilation and revision of what were originally the fifth and sixth volumes of this series, following on from The Bloodline Feud and The Traders’ War, and laying the ground for the first in the next series, Empire Games. It is a very good romp through a slightly alternate early-noughties America, twinned with a couple of parallel universes where history worked out differently; in all three there are rapid and drastic changes of government, with extraordinary violence in our own world and a rapid turnover of US leadership. Stross maintains his fascination with economics and the management of intelligence services, and his central figure remains a largely sympathetic character trying to improve the worlds that she lives in but also getting to grips with her own limits. ( )

Third in the revised Merchant Princes series; the US knows about worldwalkers now and is out for blood—and oil from the less-developed worlds, where it’s just sitting under the territory we know as Texas. Plenty of other stuff is happening politically in two other worlds as well, including a political revolution where Miriam was trying to start an industrial revolution. Stross could definitely use an Ameri-picker for small details of speech when he’s trying to write Americans, but I had fun anyway. He gets a lot of mileage out of the misunderstandings that let nations lurch into war—misunderstanding intent, misunderstanding goals, misunderstanding what counts as a stable situation. And his alternate Iraq war is, sadly, much more successful than the real one even though he probably thought he was being pessimistic. ( )

http://ninecats.org/margaret/blog/2015/07/27/merchant-princes-trilogy-charles-st... ( )