The Labyrinth Index

"We fight on so that something that remembers being human might survive." (199)

The ninth of the Laundry Files novels allegedly begins a new plot arc, and it does conspicuously shift focus to characters that have previously been more peripheral to the series. But its enjoyment is still highly dependent on prior familiarity with the concepts and broad narrative that Stross has worked up in the previous volumes. Some exposition in the opening chapter is pitched just about right for returning junkies like me, who haven't had a fix since The Delirium Brief was published a year earlier, but it's not sufficient to ramp up real appreciation for the setting and character motivations here.

Without serious spoilering, since all of this is clear in show more the opening chapter, I can say that this book delivered two unexpected features right off. First, the narrating character switches to Mhari Murphy, who was introduced in the very first book, but has never before occupied the role of storyteller-diarist. Second, most of The Labyrinth Index takes place in the United States. I doubt Charles Stross was directly inspired by The Last Days of Christ the Vampire (and I'm not sure whatever became of my copy, read back in the 1980s), but there are some interesting points of conceptual contact between the two books.

As a commentary on the current state of American politics, the Stross novel is a bit oblique. In the contemporary Laundryverse USA under conditions of ongoing Nazgul-based coup, it is magically forbidden to think of the American Presidency, whereas in the "real" Trumplandia it is required that we think about it all the time. In any case, he still manages to highlight the extent to which the Imperial Presidency of the 21st century has all of the power and most of the institutional and cultural vices of an actual monarchy.

It was no surprise that I wolfed this book down in a couple of days. The story is consistent with the level of increased gloom established in the immediately previous volume, and it is dedicated to the author's father, who seems to have died while it was being written. The bleakness is not completely unrelenting, though. As usual, there is some real wit in the writing, and in the end the state of affairs is not markedly worse than the beginning. Indeed, under some definitions of the word, the book would qualify as a "comedy." show less

Stross returns to the roots of the Laundry Files here: the previous few books had moved away from the original espionage themes, but in this book they are back with a vengeance: insertion of clandestine agents into enemy territory with an active -- not merely information-gathering -- remit. However, this is no Longer the Bondian storytelling of The Jennifer Morgue where one could cheer for the Laundry in relatively good conscience. This is firmly in the shades of grey territory where the best thing that can be said for the narrator is that she serves a lesser evil: which isn't saying much when the greater evil in question is Cthulhu. As an installment of the Case Nightmare Green arc, this provides far more context to just how much show more trouble the world is in: the Black Chamber isn't the only threat on the horizon, and the Mandate's plans for the future aren't very pleasant, either.

Mhari is an effective narrator for this stage of the series arc. She's probably less self-deceiving than any of the previous narrators -- she has to deal with the implications of her current state in such a way that anything other than very short-tern self-deception is very, very difficult -- but also has less expertise than, say, Bob or Mo, so her perspective is more limited.

This is the third spec fic book in two months of which the author has indicated, in one way or the other, that it's a response to Trumpian America. (The others, for reference, are Steven Erikson's Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart and Miles Cameron's Cold Iron.) Stross manages to set up an America which is actually worse than the current reality, and a different kind of crisis, but he still highlights, thematically, the way in which the US has a quasi-monarchical focus on the Presidency, not merely in a constitutional sense, but in terms of the social and emotional response of Americans to the office.

As always, this is well-written, worth picking up for anyone reading the series, and a good example of how to blend black humour with an otherwise very dark story to make it readable and enjoyable. show less

Okay, the President has not technically been kidnapped. Rather, the Operational Phenomenology Agency, aka the Black Chamber, aka the Nazgul, has worked a geas across the entire United States to make them forget that the President even exists. Mhari Murphy, Laundry Officer, PHANG, (oh, and Bob's ex from book 1) is the Bad Dude responsible for getting him back, along with a team of high-level Laundry agents doing old-school 'Set Europe Ablaze' style SOE sabotage.

This being The Laundry, nothing is simple or easy. The new Prime Minister, an avatar of Nyarlathotep, has taken a personal interest in Mhari's mission. Failure means that her skull, and the skulls of everyone she loves, will decorate the sacrificial arch Nyarly is building in the show more center of London. Success means advancing the plans of an Elder God, who's only virtue is that it finds humanity amusing. And messing up means getting caught in the United States, which is now run by the NSA crossed with mind-hacking Cthulhu cultists. There are fates worth than death, and being used as a fleshy avatar of Cthulhu is one of them.

Some parts really worked. Nyarlathotep is supremely creepy as Prime Minister. The Americans protecting the President, the last little cells free of the Nazgul's geas, feel properly paranoid and oppressed. They forget their mission every time they sleep, and are running on modafinil and fear. The ultimate plan of the Nazgul, a brute force attempt to wake Cthulhu by the inner solar system into a Matryoshka brain of orbital computers running invocations, is a nice call-back to Stross's first Singularity books. And the final set-piece, which involves a Concorde from 666 Squadron, is properly badass.

That said, while Mhari is decent enough as a protagonist, her concerns about being a bloodsucking vampire working for an inhuman monster, never felt more than obligatory. Yes, yes, she's a nice English girl so she doesn't like living by murder, and doesn't want to be an advance agent for an Empire that'd make the people who did the Opium Wars, mustard gas in COIN, and multiple famines in the name of the Free Market look like innocent schoolboys. But I don't really believe it. Stross is still only so-so about writing about America, though better than he was back in Book #4, as he sketches in a National Treasure style occult history of the US.

And finally the bad, and this is a thing where an editor should have put a foot down. The central human relationship of the book is between Mhari and Jim/Officer Friendly from Book 6. Jim is a super-powered flying tank, senior police officer, and silver fox of a man. Mhari has a "strictly physical, seriously guys" relationship with him that grows over the course of the book, and she also consistently calls him Fuckboy. Which, and Urban Dictionary will back me up on, is an entirely different species of lameass loser. I totally believe that Mhari would have a deeming nickname for Jim, but I'm roughly the same age she is, and there's no way an ambitious career-minded woman of my generation would use that specific phrase for someone who she ever wants to see again, even if she is a self-loathing monster.

There's also a doubt growing the in back of my mind about the long-term direction of The Laundry series, and the role of humans. Stross has always been concerned with the relationship between people and superhuman entities, whether they've been AIs running Economics 2.0, the Eschaton, corporate and government bureaucracies, or Lovecraftian entities standing in for any of the prior. His best heroes have dealt with these entities by being clever, basically by the hacker ethos. Mhari is not a hacker, she's a people person (or at least was). But Mhari solves her problems with superspeed, superstrength, and a basilisk gun. If the series going forward is just about PHANGs, that's a bad joke played on the readers. show less

Okay. So I admit I've been chomping at the bit to get my hands on this and I seriously couldn't wait.

So I devoured it.

Only to be devoured.

By K Syndrome.

And then I was volunteered for a Mission Impossible with other K Syndromes and other oddities in the United States! And the President... has been erased from everyone's minds. The Gesh! What a Gesh!!! It's almost like he gave us our greatest wish while making it totally evil at the same time. :) And then I remember that old stint on the internet when Cthuhlu ran for President under the party line, "Vote for the Lesser Evil!" Hmmm... could Stross be running with a theme, here? Maybe? :)

Of course, with the Laundry Files in general, Stross doesn't stint on the action, the ramping up of show more the peril, or the epic disasters as the world tumbles into a singularity of evil. This time it's focused on America with a crack team of vampires and hand-picked specials invading and ostensibly "saving" the pres. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

I loved it. What can I say? Stross writes like a bureaucratic nightmare storm with a big dose of despair and disillusionment backed up by a rock-solid sense of duty spiced with fatalism. :) What can one do when a greater demon is the Prime Minister and the only way you can survive is by participating in human sacrifice? It's just another day on the job. :)

Brilliantly fun. :) show less

compulsively readable, like all The Laundry series (here The Laundry itself has been disbanded, though many of its denizens are still around, and its arcane bureaucracy has of course itself survived the cut). most of the plot takes the occult spooks to America, where the President has been unaccountably forgotten. very funny, and it moves very fast. in these near-future novels, the espionage novel meets cyberpunk means Lovecraftian horror; it's all about high-tech magic and sometimes even elves, so throw fantasy into the mix too. if you've never read this series, why not?

Told from Mhari the vampire’s semi-omniscient POV (she consults seers), the story picks up with the British government in thrall to the Black Pharaoh. Mhari and other politically wobbly operatives are sent to the US to find the President, since almost the entire country has forgotten him due to a geas cast by the American occult spy agency, which would rather have Cthulhu in charge. And that’s just part of it. I can see why Stross might want to end the series—he has rather written himself into a corner, or rather into an insane geometry now that the stars have come right—but I’d read more.

I rather like the balance of day-to-day life contrasted with the gibbering horrors of the other realms in the earlier books in this series, but that is pretty much gone and there are ever so few touchstones of normalcy in this version, which is a real loss. It's got the dark humor and the fast pace, but it's all mechanics now.