I’ve had Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series in my TBR for a while; got the first one on Kindle sale a while back; it was pretty good. Grabbed 3 more from the library, although not quite in sequence. It turns out that you can read this series out of order and it will still mostly make sense. There may be references to someone dies or got married or is in another job or a certain probably evil who knows what is back, but how that happened in a prior novel isn’t necessary to the current one. Started on one and it had a different narrator and I just couldn’t get into it; picked up another, and Bob Howard was back but it turned into one of those later in the series kinds of things where nothing goes right ever or at all, so things just keep getting worse beginning to end; that’s the exact reason why I got tired of Harry Dresden. Put that one down too.
The penultimate option was a novella, and I think the most current installment of the story, given that it’s from 2021. Bob is again the central character and thankfully this time it’s not everything is always and forever awful; it’s still horror-tinged speculative in nature, but there’s some relief from the eternal nothing is ever going to be ok or the annoying new narrator (Alex just has no personality whatsoever). Escape from Yokai Land sees Bob going to Tokyo to pick up evil spirit vanquishing where his former supervisor Angleton had left off. Basically, Bob is learning some new skills (acquired in a previous adventure, but that doesn’t matter too much here) and he’s been called in to re-set supernatural barriers or in a few cases vanquish the supernatural things themselves which have been getting increasingly active lately. His guide is Dr. Suzuki and she’s a pretty intriguing character, first for the mystery of who/what she is, and also for how she navigates being a powerful and intelligent woman in a culture and situation that doesn’t seem to value that. The eventual main thing Bob has to face and vanquish is basically what would result in the manifestation of belief in Hello Kitty Princess in her own theme park, and even though it’s kind of demonic, it’s also kind of funny in an ironic way to picture the whole confrontation sequence. The only complaint I have is that the ending is kind of abrupt, and there are some things that go unanswered, but at least the main problem has been dealt with, and Bob can get back to England and whatever is waiting for him there.