Review: Not to the usual standard
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 06 22, 2014
I generally enjoy the Laundry Files, but this one was underwhelming. In particular, the HP Lovecraft story arc felt thin (and was not helped by formatting issues on my Kindle that meant from about the middle on, the Lovecraft-specific text was not differentiated at all). And while Stross made light of the way the Lovecraft prose infected narrative, Lovecraft's voice did not stand out as being distinctive. And at times it seemed that Lovecraft had been infected with Stross' jokey style, rather than the other way around.Then there was the incursion itself, which really made little sense when you stopped to consider. Sure, the Laundry never fights normal, terrestrial beasties, but usually there is a tricky twist, a "ta da" moment when the reveal shows us how clever we mere mortals really are. Our reveal here was relatively flat and the superior nature of the foe suggests that without high-tech weaponry it would prevail, which makes no sense either, because by rights we'd already be overrun with the nasties.And the representation of country England was even more farcical than Stross usually is, with characters so over the top it verged into silliness.So, more of a miss for me but if you're a rabid Laundry fan the price of admission is not too much that you couldn't overlook the structural flaws and probably enjoy it.