Equoid {novella}

If this story had come out ten years earlier, I would never have let my daughter play with those MyLittlePony things. But she grew to love giraffes instead of horses or unicorns, so I suppose that worry would've been for naught anyway. At least until Stross pens something horrific about those ungainly ungulates.

If you're new to the Laundry Files, this series is a bit of James Bond battles Lovecraftian beasties and the occult with a healthy dose of The Office thrown in. But our intrepid hero (Bob Howard) resembles John Oliver more than Daniel Craig. In Equoid, Bob is sent to investigate reports of an equoid infestation (unicorns) at a farm in southern England.

Stross has managed to take the wholesome creature of little girl fantasies ( show more target="_top">here's why) and, after running it through a Lovecraftian filter, turned it into a horrific monstrosity replete with squishy, icky things and pubescent nightmares (If I had read this at 14...[shudder]). It's so bad that, in all seriousness, some readers will be genuinely disturbed by the imagery. But it all fits. If you understand Lovecraft's universe and the biology of anglerfish well enough, you'll recognize that none of the horror is gratuitous.

Stross also offers a glimpse into what drove the first of several nervous breakdowns that HPL suffered during his teens. He does so by offering snippets of a letter "written" by HPL, which the Laundry has on file. I think Stross did a great job mimicking HPL's style for the letter.

If you've read any of the books in the Laundry Files series, you'll be familiar with the writing style and story structure. It's a great addition to the series, and I highly recommend it to all those who enjoy it. show less

Stross's Laundry series is one of those concepts that is maddeningly obscure and yet awesome: Take equal parts Lovecraft Mythos, James Bond, and Bastard Sysop From Hell, season with British black humor and computer science jokes, pulp and that's the Laundry and it's brilliant.

In this novella (post-The Jennifer Morgue, pre-The Fuller Memorandum), Bob is up against flesh-eating alien parasites that look like horses and spread via mind-controlled girls. In short, unicorns, and they're out for murder. A novella is the perfect length for a Laundry series: Stross can spin a great yarn where the stakes of a small English town (and Bob Howard's tasty brain) is enough to keep you reading, the absurdity English bureaucracy is on full display, and show more the world-ending tension of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is safely backgrounded. show less

Re-read 2/23/18:
As good as the first time, or perhaps better. And even when I know what's coming, I still shiver when all the implications are driven home. It doesn't matter how many times I've read this.

It still scares me shitless.


Original Review:

Oh my god that was a sharp one. I'm bowled over, not only because this was easily the best Bob Howard story I've read, including all of the novels, all of which I love, but because the tale was freaking sharp. There wasn't an ounce of fat on it, and it drove me into a shivering horror state even as I was expecting great hyperbole, great dry wit, and a character I love. What I didn't expect was the absolute chittering horror that I felt as I read it.

It wasn't HP Lovecraft's deathbed confession show more or purple prose, although that certainly got to me in the end. It wasn't the singularly nightmarish aspects of the unicorns, either, although it came DAMN CLOSE. It was the idea of all those little girls playing with all those little ponies in the boarding school. That got me. That got me to my core.

I had to put the novella down for a few minutes to fucking recover.

Now, I'm going to admit something. I have been a long time fanboy of Mr. Stross, and I devour all his works like they are candy and get super giddy over the idea of the Laundry Files and wish to the sweet heavens that the Eschaton series didn't have that fatal flaw that prevents him from writing more.

I'm predisposed to give him the benefit of lots of leeway because of the power of my never-ending fanboy powers.

Well, I'm telling you all, right now, that I'm forgoing all rights and status of being a fanboy and saying that this little gem of a story stands mightily and beautifully on its own without any kind of preamble, preconception, or good-will. More than that, I'm tempted to rank it up there with the very best novellas I've ever read. It has all the markings of the best. Tight story, great characters, and IMPACT. Oh god, the impact. I'm still scared shitless, and I'm an old hand at enjoying horror. What's more, this is great SF, too.

And what's more, it won last year's Hugo for best Novella.

I can't believe, with all my fanboy powers for both Hugos and Stross, I am JUST NOW getting around to reading this fantastic little gem. Maybe I ought to let one of those snails crawl onto my hand. I probably deserve it, now. show less

Actually, this is something of a reread for me, as a big chunk was published online and the rest I read while loitering around bookstores. At the time, I was mostly happy to get more of Bob Howard. On the other hand, there are aspects of this book that make you want to shower with bleach when you're done; those reviewers who find the sexualized violence involving young women blatantly inappropriate have a point. Then again, people are getting butchered left, right and center in this scenario; a precursor of the body count to come. That I picked up this novella again is a comment on contemporary failures of the supply chain in Year Two AC (After Covid); I had really been looking forward to the new novella dealing with the adventures of show more Bob Howard.

So, 6-plus years on, do I still like it? It has its moments but it's not peak "Laundry." Reading between the lines it's as much of a commentary on the mentality that gave you Brexit as anything else, besides giving you a glimpse of Bob Howard as the combat necromancer to come. show less

Short,funny, vintage Stross. It seems that unicorns are actually decaying parasitic mind control swarms from a Lovecraftian dimension. Being Charlie, this is leavened with scathing vignettes of English folk and their institutions.

Equoid by Charles Stross is a Hugo winner, in a year that's had quite a bit of controversy. Initially, I was impressed by the story, but the more I think about it, the less I am. Intelligent, articulate, and witty, it has undercurrents that are dark and disturbing.

It's hard not to see echoes of Larry "Lord of Hate" Correia in Charles Stross' Equoid. Sure, there are fewer guns in Equoid than, well, anything that Correia writes, but I suspect that's only because Correia knows his firearms better than Stross. Both deal with a world under assault from supernatural monsters and both are occasionally influenced by the Lovecraftian. Both fall into the category of fiction that could best be described as a cross between horror and what happens show more when the victims are armed to the teeth. And both have a really great voice.

End comparison. Stross's hero is a government bureaucrat who calls in the artillery , while Correia's protagonists usually ARE the artillery, and while they both have different means to accomplish the same ends, they are very different voices.

In Stross's Equoid, Bob Howard is a computer geek that works for a secret British government agency. It's his job to look into the things that go bump in the night, as well as to file the appropriate paperwork to deal with it. It's a soul crushing job--and that's just a comment on the paperwork.

This week Howard has been sent out in to the countryside to look into a rumor about unicorns, and lest you keep that fond smile on your face, be warned that unicorns in this construction are anything but rainbows and sparkles. Rather, the threat of a unicorn infestation is a Lovecraftian horror that would drown the world and end humanity.

It's just another day for Howard, though.

If you pick this up, note that it's not the first in the series, but this is one of those times when you can jump in mid-stream and never miss a beat. Equoid by Charles Stross is winner of the 2014 Hugo in the novella category, I picked it up primarily for that reason, but, due to how much I enjoyed it, I suspect that I'll go back and find others in the Laundry series, of which it is a part, as well. Stross has a style that is equal parts intelligent, relying on a reader's knowledge and reading outside the story, and humorous.

If you like British humor--heavy in sarcasm and dripping with grim humor--you might enjoy dipping into Equoid. Bonus points if you've any taste for Lovecraft. Be warned, though, that there are some disturbing aspects to the story--especially if you like unicorns. show less

I used to read the Laundry books until they got too misogynstic for my taste. But this book doesn't have the main character interacting with too many women so it was bearable in that way. I did like the basic story idea that unicorns really aren't happy-shiny-ponies-with-horns and that they do, in fact, harm the female virgins they interact with. I could have done without those interactions because that sort of sexualized violence toward women really turns me off. To sum up, more enjoyable to me than the usual Laundry stuff, but still not to my tastes.