The Laundry is going stateside again—and I’m going to be dipping into spoilers again. Quite a lot in fact. Sorry. But look at all the blue hyperlinks; I’m making so many callbacks here!
So about those spoilers; at the start of The Labyrinth Index, it is clear that Britain has fallen. There was no last minute mulligan after the last book’s events. The Senior Auditor of the Laundry sold the agency and the UK both out to the Black Pharaoh. And now Fabian Everyman—also known as the Mandate—is the Prime Minister. * To prevent everyone from falling to Schiller and the Sleeper, Number 10 is now in the hands of N’yar Lat-Hotep.
But things could be worse. So much worse. In The Delirium Brief, we were given signs that all was not well stateside—the fact that Golden Promise Ministries had gotten so strong was a sign of worse things to come. Despite the more aggressive hand the Operational Phenomenology Agency (OPA) traditionally took to managing the supernatural compared to The Laundry (there is a reason the nicknames ‘Black Cauldron’ and ‘Nazgûl’ have stuck), something very nasty has still managed to take hold in the US—yes, even worse than The Mandate, who probably only keeps humanity around for shits and giggles—and now no one can remember the president. Not remember who the president is, they do not remember the position at all.
Pushing back on thoughts of “Well, aren’t we all thoroughly sick of politics?” for a moment, please consider how huge the implications of this are. We saw how much power belief in an office could carry in The Delirium Brief with regards to the geasa that were sworn to the crown. The President of the United States is the figurehead of country of more than 300 million. That must be some glamour, right? This has got to be investigated. So The Mandate calls upon Mhari Murphy, of all people, to lead the charge.
So here’s your new assignment: you will establish a new agency, recruit agents, and direct them—I have a little list of those who won’t be missed, tum-de-dum, I shall send it to you presently—in order to develop and deliver a HUMINT capability directed against the United States. […] In addition to intelligence gathering, they may be called upon in future to conduct extraction and sabotage operations if the situation calls for it, just like the old wartime SOE, hah hah! And while you’re about it, don’t forget to retrieve the President? He might come in useful.
God, The Mandate is such a shit. He might be a physical incarnation of N’yar Lat-Hotep, but he prances around pretending he’s so British he pisses tea and shit crumpets. And he trolls the hell out of anyone and everyone. But the loss of the US president is most likely the act of a being that shares his power level, and to The Mandate, having another Eldritch Horror running a nation larger than his own simply will not do.
Why pick Mhari—our new POV—to help deal with the US issue? Well, she’s not part of The Mandate’s little list of those who won’t be missed, tum-de-dum, but it turns out she does NOT have a history in the US—which means she has a clean profile. Bob, as we know from The Jennifer Morgue, is unfortunately a known entity, and cannot be called upon for this task. She is also a very capable operator, but one that seems to suffer from imposter syndrome. This makes her actions hard to predict. And The Mandate loves this. So fun! As a reader though, I was seeing some parallels to Mo’s situation in The Annihilation Score.
Most of the rest of her rag tag team that she’s asked to put together—with the exception of Jim Grey, Officer Friendly—are also rather low profile. Also—again, with the exception of Jim Grey, AKA Mhari’s ‘Fuckboy’—none of them seem at all suitable for the job! Her support team consists of Brains, Bob’s old housemate, Janice, Mhari’s old vampire workmate; and Pete the Vicar, whose inclusion would make Mo mad if she knew. There is also the Derek the DM, who can use his nerd-dice to forecast future odds of success. (His backstory can be found in A Conventional Boy.)
The last member that comes out of left field is Yarisol, a female alfär mage—the only female alfär PHANG. Yarisol, as it turns out, can use the same kind of magic Cassie could back in The Nightmare Stacks to take on the face, mannerisms and memories of another for the purpose of infiltration. But unlike Cassie, who just comes across as hyper excitable, Yarisol shows signs of what is probably Autism. She’s then asked to Xerox the identity of a sociable flippity-jibbit and lay that over her own personality. The following mental conflict is fascinating to watch, but dear god, it brings some clarity to her magic. She is also unexpectedly hilarious. Thank Christ she can be easily distracted by a game of Candy Crush Saga when she goes completely off-kilter.
It’s not just Yarisol either; the humor in this book is miles above the previous book, and it helps mask the fact that after a strong set up, it’s suffers from a slightly flat plot. Yarisol, as I mentioned, is amazing, and gives us the gem that is Tampon Wand. (Which is described to the reader by Brains, who, as a gay man, is not super familiar with feminine hygiene products and their off-label uses.) We finally get to see Bob at work from he eyes of a third party and yes, he is the guy who will insist on slouching around in hoodie and combat pants while everyone else is in suits. He’s the Eater of Souls now, what are they going to do? And then, just to show that the Laundry Files has not lost its roots in office humor, there is also a legendary Powerpoint presentation that has to be read to be believed.
And of course, I have to mention the President. Stross doesn’t actually spend a lot of time on-page describing POTUS, but his work is so skillful here, he doesn’t need to. We are not told what party Arthur Savage** belongs to, but we know he was the ex-governor of California, a previous president of SAG and he’s possibly won an Oscar. He’s erudite, charming, and we get the impression that he wouldn’t dream of cheating at golf. He seems to be a positive distillation of all things Eagle-land. Stross has been rather harsh on all things state-side since the start of the series, but this POTUS and his crew are some of the most positively regarded Americans we get introduced to.
What about the gimps of the title? Even before our crew make their way across the Atlantic, we are told that the Secret Service are being tracked by a team of faceless, silver-suited men that kind of look like Oscar statues. They might sound as silly as a Dr. Who villain, but there’s something unnerving about being followed by silver gimps at Walmart. And some, as Jim find out, can even fly. Pete finds them terrifying. Yarisol calls them clowns. The reader and the Secret Service have an excuse to be left perplexed by these body-stocking clad surveillance teams, but there’s someone else on the crew who should have figured out their deal much sooner. (Spoiler): Mhari Murphy, you should have been thinking about how their UV protection is second to none!
“Not far! Hippety-hop, hurry or the clowns will eat our toes!”
Again, while I did find the overall plot a bit lackluster, there was still plenty left by Stross to mentally play with here. The Laundry has seen the effects of a big old geas before—but the Americans never encountered Basil or Old George, and that I think has affected things in more ways than one. We should also keep in mind how the alfär system of governance-via-geasa works as well when trying to work out what went wrong here. And while there was a lot of geeking out about British civics in the previous book, and what the Laundry could do with a spare loophole or two, far less detail is given to the American system in The Labyrinth Index. Unlike the UK, the American Constitution is far more cohesive. And we are told that the OPA is subject to the bonds of a geas encoded in a steel sigil that’s buried beneath the Supreme Court. So where and when did the breach occur? This is never made 100% clear, but I wonder if they lasso-ed in some of the Supreme Court Justices? (Look how easy it was for Schiller to ensnare a number of memebers of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.)
Again, this book was a hell of a lot of fun, and I didn’t mind Mhari as a protagonist at all. She’s sort of got a harder edge and a more callous streak than any of the others so far, which is probably why she’s a successful vampire. Her main motivation has always been to survive. She might open with “Hello again, diary, and welcome to this evening’s episode of I Am So Doomed.” But she’ll pull her way through regardless.
For cbr18bingo, this one is Clowns Why? For gimp-clowns that eat your toes, that’s why. Now try and explain that to someone out of context.
And thats a bingo on the top row.
