Bad Run of Cards?

 I seem to be having a bad run of luck in my book selection process right now. 

I barely managed to finish Dead Lies Dreaming, by Charles Stross, which is in the Laundry Files universe, but which really wasn't up to his usual standards.

Then, I tried to get into a book about blockchain and crypto, but it was very poorly written and edited - rambled on and on, so I gave up.

Next was a book about corruption in the FBI, but it turned out to be a rehash of the Russian collusion narrative, and so I gave up a couple chapters in.

Then, I picked up the first novel, Isolate, in a new series by L.E. Modessit - a great author whom I have followed for years - and I hung in there for two weeks trying to finish it, but at last, alas, I decided that I just didn't give a crap any more. It just rambled on and on, repetitive and uninspired, going nowhere in particular, for around 700 pages.

Then there was Red-Handed, by Peter Schweizer, whose works I have really enjoyed over the years. Unfortunately, most of the subject matter in this book had already been covered by him a while back, and is merely topical again due to Biden being in the White House. Gave up about three chapters in.

Most recently, I decided to try the Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman. About 50% of the way through it I realized I didn't care what happened to the characters in the slightest, and didn't even like them very much, so I gave up on that one, as well.

Currently reading another book on Bitcoin, which, while it does contain a few factual problems, at least is better written than the crypto book and fortunately is short enough to avoid the rambling, unfocused approach of the aforementioned.

I'm going to try another new author tonight. Hope something finally is worth completing.

The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross

This seventh novel in the Laundry Files series takes another detour away from the story of Bob Howard, which seems to have stalled out in the midst of the breakup of his marriage, to pick up a fresh POV in Alex Schwartz, one of the PHANGs who was recruited after the scandal at the investment bank where he was working, in The Rhesus Chart.

Alex gets caught up in an incursion by beings from another plane, upon which humans have based their stories of elves. They're not exactly the singing elves of Middle Earth, and in fact their society is very warlike. They send a spy, one of the "princesses" ahead to gather information, and she assumes the form and identity of a theater arts major named Cassie, whom Alex falls head over heels for - despite figuring out fairly quickly that she's not exactly what she seems to be.

Filled with the usual Stross drolleries like,

"She racks her brain: but Cassie has no memory of ritual castration as a tool of management in this place, unless it's symbolized by the neck-wrappings man male uruk wear as part of their uniforms."

"She doesn't have any lectures to attend until four and the weather's nice: she might as well go to college and raid the theatrical wardrobe for something fancy to wear to the end of the world."

Alex, who is definitely not warrior-class, turns out to have more up his sleeve than most people thought. The "elves" pretty much use brute force spellcasting, which uses a lot of their own energy and mana stolen from the environment, but Alex is a programmer (hmm...I need to re-read the Wizardry series by Cook) and when he sets a DO LOOP to work on gathering spellcasting power, it's a wonderful thing.

This one really gets back to some of the things I used to love in the series. Hopefully we'll continue see more of the same goodness from Stross.

The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross

The finishing pages of the last Laundry Files novel left Bob & Mo in a sticky wicket, relationship-wise, as the supernatural violin she carries wants to destroy the Eater of Souls which Bob is currently hosting, and they decided they could no longer live together, which was heart-wrenching for both of them, and also for us gentle readers.

The Annihilation Score takes up with a recap of those events, and moves on with a new point of view. Dominique O'Brien "Mo" tells the story, and we see and hear very little from our old friend Bob. 

Mo is tapped by The Laundry to head up a new quick response unit dedicated to handling the sudden onset of Superheros - ordinary human beings who suddenly gain supernatural powers, often resembling those of folks from the Marvel Comics universe, like super speed, strength, or flying. Mo is way out of her depth, here, but rapidly rises to the challenge, even when saddled with two new deputies - a mermaid and a vampire - both of whom were formerly Bob's lovers. Awkward.

Lots of adventure, bureaucratic intrigue and macabre conflicts ensue. 

The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross

 If you read enough, I suppose, odd coincidences take place. For some reason, all three books I checked out from the library this week turned out to be written by British authors. So we'll just dub this the British Invasion Trifecta, and wrap it up with Charlie Stross' latest Laundry File adventure.

Bob and Mo are in a bit of a rough patch in their marriage, and their dinner together simply turns into an argument instead of a path to making up, so Bob heads in to the office for a while to take his mind off of things. He gets a bit more than marriage troubles when one of his colleagues summons a major dweller from another dimension and nearly destroys the New Annex of The Laundry, and when his side project investigating the probability that vampires actually exist bears more fruit than it should have.

This one has a number of good twists and turns, and the usual Stross humor, with Bob getting a "promotion" at the end of the messy affair, but the ending made me very upset. I'm not sure how I feel about going on with this series at this point.

A couple of amusing lines:

"(Zombies)...don't do unease:they're placid as long as they've got some flesh to embody them and the occasional hunk of brains to munch on (Any old slaughterhouse brains will do: they eat them for the fatty acids. At a pinch, you can substitute a McDonald's milkshake.)"

"We use committees for all the ulterior purposes for which they might have been designed: diffusion of executive responsibility, plausible deniability, misdirection, providing the appearance of activity without the substance, and protecting the guilty."

Equoid by Charles Stross

I was fortunate to find via Facebook post a link to a free novella by Stross. His Laundry Files stories are always amusing, while simultaneously being a bit horrifying in their Lovecraftian way. Stross interweaves love letters from HPL himself with not quite Top Secret shadowy government documents and Bob Howard's wry narrative for a most entertaining tapestry.

It's a slow day in the office, filling out forms, when Bob Howard is called to his boss's office and given the assignment to head out into the English countryside to investigate a rumor that there's a unicorn infestation. Bob's not much of a country boy, but he heads out to face the music just the same. Along the way he encounters not only the arcane and unsavory equoids, but a number of very very British characters, whom I'm sure I would appreciate more if I were properly British myself.

Phrases like, "a tie that appears to be knitted from the intestines of long-dead badgers" appear every so often in the tale, causing one to chortle uncontrollably.

One of the key things in this story is the revelation for most of us, I am sure, that unicorns are not sparkly creatures who give sweet virgins pony rides, but rather more dangerous beasts.

"But I do assure you, young feller me lad, that unicorns are very real indeed, just like great white sharks and Ebola Zaire—and they’re just as much of a joking matter. Napalm, Mr. Howard, napalm and scorched earth: that’s the only language they understand. Sterilize it with fire and nerve gas, then station armed guards.”

Stross is a master of novel descriptive bits, such as, "Greg, for his part, is suitably subdued: even his beard hangs heavy, as if it senses a thunderstorm-drenching in the offing."


Fun read, and free, too!

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

This iteration of the Laundry Files takes us back to when Bob goes on his first field assignment, and meets Mo, his future wife. It's probably in chronological sequence if I'd read it when it was published, but somehow or other I missed it the first time around. Bob gets sent to the United States to help repatriate a British scientist who is working for a university, and who has strayed into some sensitive areas with her research.

While he is there, she is kidnapped by Mukhabarat agents led by a possessed human with a German accent. Bob, being the impulsive sort that he is, tries to rescue her from the kidnappers, with the not exactly unexpected (from our POV) result of getting bonked on the head and put out of business until the whole rescue has run its course. When he returns to jolly old England, his boss, Angleton, briefs him in on some top secret material that indicates that some necromancers of the Third Reich are not as dead as previously supposed, and are perhaps hiding out in a pocket universe.

Mo, who has made it back to England as well, and who is rooming with Bob and his other roommates, Pinky and the Brain, is used as a stalking goat to lure the bad guys out of hiding. When she is kidnapped again, Bob and the Laundry swat team head off through a gate to a dying universe to fight the Nazis and other evil creatures.

There's a bonus story in this book about one of Bob's other adventures wherein he investigates the mystery of the concrete cows.

All in all, a fun read as expected from Stross.

The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross

Stross is back with more interesting action in the latest adventure of Bob Howard, Laundry civil servant without peer. A group of American evangelicals have gotten their hands on some very obscure scripture, which makes the Revelation of St. John the Divine look like a walk in the park, part of which is The Apocalypse Codex. It contains instructions on how to summon dark beings from another world to invade Earth, under the guise of hastening the return of Jesus Christ to establish his millenial kingdom.

Stross has created an intriguing cosmology for this series. In his reality, there are no benevolent gods or God, and those who think so have been seriously deluded. The universe is populated for the most part with incredibly malevolent and powerful beings from other dimensions (think Lovecraft, mostly) whose greatest desire is to conquer and/or consume all beings on our planet. All that stands between them and us are agencies like the British Laundry and the U.S. Black Chamber (aka Nazgul). It's possible Strauss will introduce us to the Russian, Chinese or other versions at some point in the series.

Bob has been identified for the fast track to management, and gets sent on that most dangerous of assignments - a team building middle management training course! After surviving that by the skin of his teeth, he is given an assignment to manage and monitor a couple of External Assets, or contractors, witch Persephone Hazard and her sidekick Johnny. Their assignment is to investigate and possibly eliminate an evangelist with the Golden Promise Ministries, Ray Schiller, who is attempting to suborn officials at high levels within the British government. They travel to Denver, Colorado, where his ministry has its headquarters, and all sorts of interesting mayhem ensues.

Lots of good political and magical intrigue and a nice setup to Bob's next adventure.

Wireless by Charles Stross

Wireless is a nice little collection of short stories by Charles Stross, good for keeping you entertained with his usual style when your attention span is too short for a novel. The first story in this book, Missile Gap, gives us a future world somewhat reminiscent of Niven's Ringworld or Chalker's Well of Souls universe, where some vast and near omnipotent power has whisked the population of Earth away to a discworld the size of a billion Earths. The story of how mankind continues to behave in the same ways as it always has, with petty rivalries and wars, in the face of this new challenge, is rather depressing.

Rogue Farm is a semi-serious tale about a future when people have gone rural once again, taking advantage of bioengineering and memory downloads to become, in some cases, more than human.

A Colder War is a perturbing tribute to Lovecraftian horror. It explores the question of what would have happened if the Soviets and the U.S. had gotten their hands on the eldritch horrors the old master described, and used them to wage a cold war instead of nuclear weapons.

Maxos is a short-short, with a semi-surprise ending only a Nigerian banker could love.

Down on the Farm is a novella set in the same world as The Atrocity Archives, The Fuller Memorandum, and The Jennifer Morgue. Agent Bob Howard of the Laundry is sent off to The Farm, to investigate complaints stemming from alleged maltreatment of medically retired Laundry agents, and has his hands full countering an intrusion from the Other side.

Unwirer envisions a world where the internet was not meant to be free, after all, and the U.S. government pursues those renegades who dare to attempt to get internet access to the masses with the zeal we now reserve for drug smugglers and terrorists.

Snowball's Chance is another satiric look at the results of global climate change. Two Irishmen are in a bar (I know, right?) when a satanic representative walks in. The story of how they match wits with the devil is most amusing.

Trunk and Disorderly is Stross' attempt to capture the essence of humorous writing, a la P.G. Wodehouse. Decadent aristocrat Ralphie McDonalds gets into deep kimchee at a betrothal party for one of his friends, and only the very competent efforts of his butler, Ms. Feng, can save the day.

The final story, Palimpsest, relates the story of a man who joins the Stasis, a super-secret time traveling group which is attempting to save man from extinction over the millenia....or are they?

A mixed bag of nuts here, but worth reading, as Stross usually is.

Rule 34 by Charles Stross

If William Gibson had waited twenty years to write Neuromancer, it might have turned out to be very much like Rule 34. Gibson had no idea what kind of odd things might crawl out of cyberspace in a couple of decades, but Stross seems to capture a near future that's far too real for comfort. The story takes place in the same milieu as Halting State, not too much later, but doesn't seem to have many of the same characters.

There are several separate story lines and characters that Stross follows from beginning until the end, when he weaves all of the strands back together again. It's a little confusing on that score, as well as trying to learn the new slang that all of the characters spout so naturally.

Detective Inspector Liz Kavanaugh is the head of the Rule 34 squad, which is tasked with monitoring the internet and heading off memes that can mutate from harmless fetishes and amusements to criminal activities. When some ex-cons turn up dead, in various locations around Europe, some disturbing coincidences and their manner of death leads Liz to believe that there's a common entity and purpose behind the bizzare killings.

A muslim immigrant from India, named Anwar, has just been released from jail on probation. He needs to keep his nose clean, not associating with the petty criminals, including his brother-in-law, who got him involved in dubious undertakings to begin with. One of his old friends, and sometime lovers, Adam, puts him onto a job lead, working as a part-time consul for a breakaway republic of Kyrgiztan, Przewalsk. Unfortunately, though the job appears to be quite proper, Anwar soon finds himself involved in some unsavory activities, and realizes that the entire consulate may be a huge scam.

A representative of The Organization (like a high tech mafia), who goes by the name of The Toymaker, arrives in Edinburgh to interview executives for a new operation he's begun. Unfortunately, both candidates for the position are among the recently deceased, and he suspects "enemy action".

So what do a bunch of spammers' murders have to do with the economy of Kyrgiztan and the plots of The Organization? You'll have to read through this tortuously twisty book to find out. Very imaginative vintage Stross, though he paints a rather dismal view of the digital future.

Short Takes

(9/10/08) I did finish reading Saturn's Children by Charles Stross and Spend to the End by Laurence J. Kotlikoff. Neither one of those books really did much for me. Started reading the new Reacher novel by Lee Child. He's always good.

(9/29/08) Did finish Greywalker by Kat Richardson (quite good).

(10/9/08) Started reading Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick, and decided I must just take it back to the library and get something decent to read.

Short Takes

2/8/07 Picked up a new book, Jennifer Morgue, by Charles Stross, author of the Hidden Family series. It's a really amusing read. He's got a lovely twisted wit. Some of the things he says about corporate customs, computer geekiness, etc. are just hilarious. There's a short story about the same protagonist in the back of the book that's got a really fun take on MUDs and RPGs.

2/9/07 Read Card's new novel, Empire, yesterday. Pretty much up to his usual standards, but the ending seemed a little lame.

Short Takes

1/13/06 Last night, started reading The Hidden Family, by Stross, and didn't put it down till I finished, about three hours later. Kinda a cross between the Amber stuff and Connecticut Yankee.

1/19/06 Read a book my mom had given me, Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief, by Mason & Gruenfeld, which was quite engrossing. Stayed up till about midnight finishing it.

The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross

The name is Howard...Bob Howard. The United Kingdom's secret agent in Stross' latest novel doesn't even pack a pistol, much less have a license to kill. He's married, and likes to lay in on Saturday mornings enjoying a leisurely breakfast. He works for The Laundry, a super-secret agency responsible for tracking and combating paranormal manifestations before they get out of hand. Most  of the time he's just a paper-pusher, but every once in a while he gets up to a bit of mischief, as he does in The Fuller Memorandum.

Stross is just so deliciously snarky in this book! Towards the end, as things get intense and our hero finds himself in the clutches of some really nasty cultists, the sarcastic wit disappears, but it's pretty tough to keep a sneering upper lip when they're carving sushi from your body.

One of the best examples of Stross' British humor comes when Bob goes to replace his smartphone.
"About the only smartphone that doesn't stink like goose shit is the JesusPhone. But I've steadfastly refused to join the cult of Jobs....The JesusPhone, I swear it is smiling at me: Come to me, come to me and be saved...That's at least a class five glamour."
and
"Mo (Bob's wife) rolls her eyes. 'Bob loses saving throw vs. shiny with a penalty of -5. Bob takes 2d8 damage to the credit card.'"

This isn't exactly urban fantasy, but something similar. Stross borrows heavily from Lovecraft's mythology, as well as other dark tales. It appears that we humans are living in a universe far stranger than we think, and the beings that inhabit that universe are either indifferent to us, or find our souls to be tasty snacks. The end of the world is nearer than we think, as the combined thoughtwaves of humans on the planet is rapidly approaching critical mass, and are about to draw the attention of very bad things.

People who know about the coming apocalypse either are working for The Laundry or one of its foreign counterparts to try to delay the inevitable, or they have decided to throw in their lot with the elder gods and demons, to try to negotiate a favored position when the time comes. Bob runs afoul of one such group, and has the devil's own time getting free.

You really should read this one, and the previous books in the series, The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue.

The Trade of Queens, by Charles Stross

A friend of mine once commented on a novel, saying in effect "The Dungeon Master is tired and wants to go to bed, so everybody dies". I get a little bit of that feeling after reading Stross' latest - and last - book in the Merchant Princes series. If you haven't been following the series, it's an alternate universe tale. On a planet Earth that physically resembles ours, but in which the industrial revolution never happened, there's a family of people who have the natural ability to "world walk". They focus on a special symbol and their brains take them from their world to ours.


Since none of the geopolitical boundaries in our world exist in the one next door, they're able to make their fortunes mainly by smuggling goods without ever crossing a border checkpoint. In their business, they've developed some interesting ties with organized crime and organized government. As a bit of insurance against one of their employers, who has become the vice president of the U.S., some of their agents have world-walked into secure military facilities, and absconded with some backpack-sized nukes.

Just as the previous novel ended, the Clan was involved in a massive civil war between its progressive and conservative factions, and the conservative faction somehow decided it would be a good idea to demonstrate to the U.s. that they were not to be messed with. As this novel begins, that faction sends three nukes to Washington DC, detonating two of them successfully, destroying the White House and killing the president.

In the meantime, the heroine of the series, Miriam, a woman raised from birth in the U.S., but who is actually a Clan heir and capable of world-walking, is trying to get to a safe place in the midst of the civil war. In earlier novels, she discovered a third alternate Earth, where the Revolutionary War never happened, and the Americas are still ruled mostly by a British king. She had been involved with the resistance movement there, and her contacts are now people in power after a semi-successful modern revolution.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the U.S. government has come up with a technical solution to cross between universes, and the newly sworn in President declares war on the Clan, sending a fleet of bombers across the world boundaries to retaliate for the attack on DC.

Murder, vengeance and mayhem abound, and very few live happily ever after. Stross claims in the forward that he's done with the series, but he may have left the door open a crack for later stories in this alternate universe universe, should his publishers make him an offer he can't refuse. If you've been following this series, you've gotta read it for that sense of completion, but don't expect a great deal of satisfaction at the wrap-up.