Stalin's successes at warding off invasion, for example, are credited to an intelligence that lives underneath the Kremlin and is being fed purged dissidents in return for her services, alternately called Zat al-Dawahi ("Mistress of Misfortunes") or Machikha Nash ("our stepmother").
This sounds like a direct literary ancestor of Ian Tregillis' Milkweed trilogy.
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This sounds like a direct literary ancestor of Ian Tregillis' Milkweed trilogy.