Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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When Lovecraft Has His Pigeons Come Home to Roost.

The Regicide Report by Charles Stross

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I did it, I finally got to the last mainstream Laundry Files Book! Spoilers for previous books abound. It the interim between The Labyrinth Index and The Regicide Report, Stross wrote a few books in a branch off series about the New Management—which is the nickname given to The Mandate’s government in the UK. I only mention this here, because I read these books before The Regicide Report came out, and because they are set rather later on than The Regicide Report, I knew there […]

When Lovecraft dons a Gimpsuit

The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross

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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 […]

When Lovecraft Dismantles the Government

The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross

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Bob’s Back! And so are the the spoilers for previous books. Be warned! Our main protagonist may be back but all is not good with the world. The Laundry is in big trouble. A mainstay of the British government for decades (albiet a secretive one), The Laundry has suddenly come under scrutiny. Thanks to the events of The Nightmare Stacks, one could argue there is no use trying to hide magic from the general public, and the existence of the department is now public. Unfortunately, […]

When Lovecraft Comes to Leeds

The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross

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One of the issues with the main protagonist ‘leveling up’ is that it can make them harder to write into a story. Bob Howard, who has been the main protagonist of the Laundry Files up until this point, was at the receiving end of both a career and supernatural-power advancement at the end of The Rhesus Chart. And this probably made it harder for Stross the write the same kinds of stories  he had been up until that point. So for The Nightmare Stacks, he […]

When Lovecraft Meets The Home Office.

The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross

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Very blatant spoilers for the previous books in the series here—be warned. Has there ever been a book that you’ve really changed your mind about on re-read? The Annihilation Score is one of these. The Annihilation Score was a Laundry Files entry that was always going to face an uphill battle; not only was the first one to pivot away for Bob’s point of view, it also dealt with a a subject that perhaps does not gel terribly well with the subject of Eldritch horrors—superheroes. […]

When Lovecraft Wears an Investment Banker’s Face

The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross

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“Don’t be silly, Bob, said Mo, everyone knows vampires don’t exist!” This is the one with vampires in it. And investment bankers. Who are the greater bloodsuckers, you might ask? Trick question, they are one and the same.  Up until this point, a lot of the workplace drama side of The Laundry Files has been focused on the ins and outs of being a system admin for the civil service. A disproportionate amount of people that Bob (and by extension, the reader) have been rubbing […]



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