This is what happens if you say to yourself, "I know! For my debut, I'll write an SF novel that's a giant allegory for the Edinburgh Festival!" OK, there's more to it than that and it's a page turner. Those familiar with Stross's later works will see many familiar themes here - Cthulhu mythos, the...
I'm ambivalent about this series: most of Stross's flaws are absent - no Luggage Syndrome! - but somehow it's not the page turner most of his books are. Thinking about why that is led me to two conclusions. Firstly the characters are not that interesting. Secondly, the characteristic Stross humour i...
Whoah! I wasn't expecting that! Initially I was a little disappointed because the much heralded return of BoB Howard as narrator was not as much as fun as anticipated: his distinctive voice seems to have largely disappeared. To some extent this is understandable since he's ten years older than whe...
It did keep me engaged but I wasn't really into it. The James Bond subtext was fun, particularly as we saw the Lazenby Bond over the weekend. When Bob Howard goes to a conference in Germany (and I laughed my way through his experiences with the Smart Car on the Autobahn) he's on the beginning of an ...
The gazillionth Laundry File confirms that the success of its predecessors depended heavily on the voice of Bob Howard by again not using it. Instead we get Howard-lite in the form of newbie vampire and Laundry recruit, Alex. Alex is the kind of nervous, out of his depth nerd Bob was way back in the...
Mysteriously, this book never made it to my on-line shelves the first time I read it.Second time around, it was fun enough but I found parts repetitive - recapitulating the basic set up of the series once makes sense - especially for people jumping on board at this late stage - but four or more time...
The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files #7) by Charles Stross When Alex Schwartz took a lucrative job developing high frequency trading algorithms, he had no idea how literal his transformation into a bloodsucking vampire was going to be. In the world that Stross creates, higher mathematics open a g...
There is so much about this series that I geek out on, it's a wonderful mix of sardonic humor, tech geekery, and tentacles from beyond. "Case Nightmare Green" and "Jesus Phone" are phrases anyone hanging out with me for an extended period of time may hear. Needless to say, I was both quite excited...
I might have given this book a 2-star rating if it had managed to have its own story arc (instead of just being an installment in the series), but it really can't stand on its own. All it contains are an introduction to the world and some incidents. Then the book ends, and apparently we're suppose...
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