Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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 […]

Night of the Living Hello Kitty Princess Demon-Deity

Escape From Yokai Land by Charles Stross

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I’ve had Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series in my TBR for a while; got the first one on Kindle sale a while back; it was pretty good. Grabbed 3 more from the library, although not quite in sequence. It turns out that you can read this series out of order and it will still mostly make sense. There may be references to someone dies or got married or is in another job or a certain probably evil who knows what is back, but how that […]

If you need an entire glossary of acronyms and jargon, you may have a little problem

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

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The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files 1) is one of those titles that just kept popping up on my radar, and then when it went on Kindle sale I figured, that was the time. The premise is a cross between Office Space and X-Files, kind of like a supernatural NCIS kind of way. Our protagonist is Bob Howard, an IT done of the corporate variety on the surface, but who in reality works for a secret government agency specializing in protection against magic and the supernatural […]



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