Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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When Lovecraft… goes Hillsong?

The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross

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Still making my way through the re-read of the Laundry Files novels and I’ve hit on one of my favorites. The Apocalypse Codex is set nearly a year ofter the events of The Fuller Memorandum, and poor Bob is still sort of in recovery. It’s not just the whole business of receiving a bit of a soul-shellacking from the Black Pharaoh, which seems obvious from the last book. But it’s also the absolute shock he received from work, who have made their intentions to compress […]

When Lovecraft… Spills the Tea?

The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross

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When writing about The Atrocity Archives, I mentioned that the friend who first recommended The Laundry Files to me  didn’t do me the grace of recommending the first book, but rather a later one. That book was The Fuller Memorandum, and I suspect because it was the first book I read, it’ll always be the quintessential Laundry Files book for me.  After their Caribbean jaunt in The Jennifer Morgue, both Bob and his now wife, Mo, are back in London, working in the Laundry’s offices. […]

Where Lovecraft Meets Spycraft

The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross

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I’m still making my way through the Laundry Files books, in hope that I’ll be reviewing the final one before the year is out. In my review of the Atrocity Archives I did mention that while the premise was good, the book was quite episodic and disjointed. To expand on that a little: re-reading it, it seems clear that the author was exploring two distinct ideas — mixing the public sector with eldritch horrors, and mixing espionage with eldritch horrors. Some of the later books […]

Where Lovecraft Meets Tradecraft

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

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Charlie Stross finished up The Laundry Files series earlier this year, so I decided I should do a bit of a re-read.  It’s been at least 15 years since I’ve read some of these, so I thought a little brush up couldn’t hurt.  But I have to mention something weird about my friends first; when I did a re-read of the Obernewtyn series a while back, I mentioned that I started reading them based off a friend’s recommendation. And this friend didn’t do me the […]

Not Without My Dice.

A Conventional Boy by Charles Stross

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I’ve been a fan of Charlie Stross’ Laundry Files for over a decade now. This has given me plenty of time to watch the series evolve. Like many other works that began as satire aimed at government bureaucracy, it has grown increasingly cynical as real life has become harder and harder to parody.  In particular, there was a rough trilogy linked to the original Laundry Files stories under the title of Tales of the New Management that hit me as painfully cynical, to the point that it […]

The President has an Academy Award and Who’s the Prime Minister of England?

The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross

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So it turns out that you can have a decent Laundry Files novel without Bob Howard as central figure; The Labyrinth Index follows Bob’s colleague Mhari Murphy who was turned into a vampire in a previous novel (one I haven’t read) thanks to a computer program/advanced math/parasite infection thing. It turns out that England is now under the control of new Prime Minister N’yar Lat-Hotep, although he doesn’t use that name with the general public. Mhari though being formerly of the Laundry which now goes […]



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