The Apocalypse Codex

May 21, 2012
The fourth novel (after 2010’s The Fuller Memorandum) in Stross’s series about the Laundry, a British mystical intelligence agency, continues its fun blend of Lovecraftian horror, espionage, and office satire. Everyman geek Bob Howard has been promoted to the Laundry’s Externalities department, an obscure branch dealing with outside contractors. His boss, Lockhart, assigns him to manage Persephone Hazard and Johnny McTavish, two mystically talented field agents investigating suddenly powerful U.S. evangelist Ray Schiller. Complications arise ranging from conflicts with U.S. spy agencies, extradimensional parasites, a Bible with some disturbing additional chapters, and the requisite zombies. Stross augments his style, expanding the narrative voice beyond Bob’s own while remaining true to earlier works in the series. Some fans might miss Bob’s wife, Mo (largely offscreen after the book’s first third), but the new characters and setting allow Stross additional opportunities for political and technological snark in the midst of this solid spy/horror story. Agent: Caitlin Blasdell, Liza Dawson Assoc.

May 1, 2012
Fourth in the series (The Fuller Memorandum, 2010, etc.) about the Laundry: a weirdly alluring blend of super-spy thriller, deadpan comic fantasy and Lovecraftian horror. In the universe Stross has conjured up, supernatural nasties are real, so naturally the British government has a department to deal with them. (The U.S. equivalent is known as the Nazgul.) The Laundry, a department so secret that anybody that stumbles upon its existence is either compulsorily inducted or quietly eliminated, seems quintessentially British: the executive offices, known as Mahogany Row, remain eerily empty; forms must be signed in blood; and there are grandiloquent code names for everything. Applied computational demonologist Bob Howard has been fast-tracked into management, having survived a series of dangerous and unpleasant encounters. His boss, James Angleton, an Eater of Souls (Don't ask. Really.), worries about CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, but there's a more immediate problem: Raymond Schiller, a supernaturally charismatic American televangelist, has grown uncomfortably chummy with the Prime Minister, but by convention and statute the Laundry may not investigate the office they answer to. So Bob finds himself working with "Externalities" in the shape of Persephone Hazard, an extremely powerful witch, and her sidekick Johnny McTavish, who has particular experience with creepy religious cults. Equipped with an unlimited credit card and a camera that doubles as a basilisk gun, Bob jets off to Denver to investigate and runs into an organization run by parasitic brain-sucking isopods--which turns out to be the least of his worries. Stross' irreverent, provocative, often unsettling and undeniably effective brew seethes with allusions to other works of literature, film, music and what-all--it's integral to the fun. Readers familiar with Stross' dazzling science fiction should relish this change of pace and direction.

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May 15, 2012
While Stross' fame as a first-rate sf writer rests on such cutting edge titles as Halting State (2007), none of his works are more venerated by fans than his semi-satirical, horror-laced Laundry Files novels. Fresh from a particularly gruesome case in which an incorporeal entity called the Eater of Souls tried to possess his body, computational demonologist Bob Howard has been taking a breather from strenuous duty at the supersecret British spy agency dubbed the Laundry by enrolling in a management seminar on his way to a promotion. Then Bob is assigned to shadow a freelance Laundry operative, Persephone Hazard, who, in turn, is keeping an eye on the prime minister, and things start to get interesting again. Persephone's primary target isn't Downing Street, however, but a wildly popular televangelist, Ray Schiller, who apparently can perform real if not entirely godly miracles and whose friendship with the prime minister has a more-diabolical-than-angelic intent. Stross' mixture of Lovecraftian horror, spy-thriller intrigue, and dry humor is addictively entertaining.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)