The Apocalypse Codex (edition 2012)

Thanks Mr Stross. (I have nothing else to say) ( )

Not up to the standard of his other Laundry novels, but once it got going I quite enjoyed it. ( )

Maybe I wasn't in the mood, around chapter 5 I wanted to throw the listening device out the car window. ( )

Another solid Laundry Files novel. Stross shows no signs of slowing down w/ his IT / Administrative Bureaucracy / Espionage / Horror novels. Bob Howard continues to grow and evolve as a character. This really makes me happy, because as a computer geek, public servant, IT stereotype, it would be really easy to play his character for yucks. Stross, instead, show personal and professional growth with each new edition.

The Evangelical cult as a villain was played with an admirably dexterous hand. It would be really easy just to dog-pile on the fundies and sling every over-the-top stereotype in their direction (like, say, in Rapture of the Nerds) but in this case, Stross is careful to show that the bad guys are crazy schismatics and even includes a rather sane and normal set of religious believers to balance the score.

I like almost everything about this entry in the Laundry Files. The only reason it got a 3 rather than a higher score is that I'm trying to counter a bit of ratings inflation. This is a solid genre series written on a really professional and solid formula. It's just not quite as original and resonant as his Halting State / Rule 34 novels or other work he's done. I've got no complaints and I want to read more of Bob Howard's adventures. Heck, I bought this one twice (one a signed copy from Transreal Fiction in Edinburgh, the other I picked up w/ Audible credits) with no regrets. ( )

As a testimony to how much I've enjoyed Stross' Laundry series, I've been accelerating my reading, with a shorter time spent between each pair of volumes as I've continued. Alas, with the fourth and most recent book, that trend must come to a halt. And this is really the first one where he uses the ending to taunt the reader with big things to come.

In previous stories, our computational thaumaturge "Bob Howard" has often found himself at desperate, even lethal, odds with managers in his "deep black" occult intel organization. And at the beginning of this novel, he finds he is to become one. But this story does not confine itself to office backstabbery, however sorcerous. Bob's new managerial role involves tagging along to a Colorado Springs outing, where the Laundry discovers that some, er, enhanced Christian Evangelicals are preparing to wake "Jesus" (they think) and bring It to Earth for dinner. As Bob observes, "There is a certain point beyond which any sufficiently extreme Calvinist sect becomes semiotically indistinguishable from the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh" (115).

The style of this book is a change from the earlier volumes, incorporating greater amounts of third-person omniscient perpsective to cover the activities of new-and-interesting characters Persephone Hazard and Johnny McTavish, as well as some villain eavesdropping. This choice sits somewhat awkwardly in what has become even more explicitly a first-person memoir by Bob, but the whole thing is written so entertainingly, and the pace of events is so brisk, that it is easy to forgive.

The silver lining to the cloud of having to wait for the next book in this series is that I'll probably use the window to get around to some of Stross' non-Laundry novels, like Accelerando or Saturn's Children.