An entertaining piece of storytelling revealing the secrets behind a large family that has got rich from a classic board game, and then a video game, called Empire. It is mainly told through one of the younger members of the clan, Alban McGill, who returns from self-imposed exile to save the family business from a takeover by a larger US corporation. As he visits different relatives, and recalls incidents from his past, we learn about his mother’s suicide and his teenage passion for his beautiful cousin, Sophie. Full of comic detail and colourful characters, it is a story in which pieces are moved around a board ahead of a finale in which the family confronts the Americans and Alban takes on Winifred, the matriarch and head of the company. It pulls in themes around globalisation, imperialism and climate change and the often problematic legacy left by each generation for the next.