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.

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.