The Trade of Queens

Finished The Trade of Queens couple of weeks ago. My only complaint is that there were too many repetitions, when different characters explain same thing to each other; hence I would rate it not on par of the previous ones (while still quite enjoyable).

It is the last book of Stross' Merchant Princes series. It is nice final of the series although there are plenty of unanswered questions, so it is sufficiently open ended and it could have sequels.

I really liked the series and its examination of what the real medieval life is; and why our society managed to develop to this stage of relative abundance. I also liked the juxtaposition of just moving goods and technology transfer for clan's revenue. I definitely subscribe for tech transfer, as the upside potential is limitless and we tend to forget how long it took to come up with those everyday simple inventions that surround us (for instance the ubiquious zipper too more then 20 years to perfect). Also you actually need machines to mass produce all those items and etc and etc, so if you go to some backward parallel world and you can be next Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Alexander Fleming and etc; you are going to amass enormous fortune when elevating all the boats. It something that can't be achieved by just trading goods.