The Labyrinth Index

Laundry Files #9

by Charles Stross

The Lovecraftian Singularity has descended upon the world in The Labyrinth Index, beginning an exciting new story arc in Charles Stross' Hugo Award-winning Laundry Files series!

Since she was promoted to the head of the Lords Select Committee on Sanguinary Affairs, every workday for Mhari Murphy has been a nightmare. It doesn’t help that her boss, the new Prime Minister of Britain, is a manipulative and deceptive pain in the butt. But what else can she expect when working under the thumb of none other than the elder god N’yar Lat-Hotep a.k.a the Creeping Chaos?

Mhari's most recent assignment takes her and a ragtag team of former Laundry agents across the pond into the depths of North America. The United States president has gone missing. Not that Americans are alarmed. For some mysterious reason, most of the country has forgotten the executive branch even exists. Perhaps it has to do with the Nazgûl currently occupying the government and attempting to summon Cthulhu.

It's now up to Mhari and her team to race against the Nazgûl's vampire-manned dragnet to find and, for his own protection, kidnap the president.

Who knew an egomaniacal, malevolent deity would have a soft spot for international relations?

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Fiction, Audiobook, Lovecraftian

368 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2018

About the author

Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy.

Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams and Richard Morgan.

SF Encyclopedia: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_...

Tor: http://us.macmillan.com/author/charle...

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 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. :)

[kartik narayanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Labyrinth Index has rekindled my interest in the Laundry Files.

I was getting a bit bored with the series since it seemed to be repeating the same formula over and over again. In fact, I don't even remember a single thing about most of the later books. The two changes that Charles Stross has brought in - focus on a different character and focus on consequences - makes this book a lot more memorable.

Mhari is a great protagonist as her supporting characters. Even thought she is a PHANG, her vulnerability makes her relatable and this goes a long way in making us care about her.

The exploration of the consequences of inviting Nyar-Lat-Hotep to be the PM of the UK is an equally good move. The Black Pharaoh is an interesting character who is inscrutable, all-knowing, ruthless but yet, somehow I like him.

I doubt I will forget this book. Go for it, but start at the beginning of the series or you will be totally lost.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apocalypses are easier slept through than experienced.

I finished this on Halloween. As expected/hoped, it was a wild ride with the author pulling out all the stops (that were never there). The reason I post the review only now? Because I needed some time. Time, amongst other things, to digest the events here.

This 9th volume in the series is from Mhairi's point of view (Bob's former girlfriend, I hadn't known that that was how her name was spelled since I only ever read the audio versions). I'm not a fan of hers. Neither am I fan of her "Fuckboy", aka Officer Friendly, aka Superintendent Jim Somethingorother. But the mark of a great author is that he can tell you a story from any POV and you enjoy the hell out of it. As I did with this.

The Laundry is gone, the Black Pharao has taken over and is the UK's Prime Minister. Mhairi has moved up in the world but it's always dangerous working for such a creature - he is, after all, only marginally the lesser evil. Instead of Case Nightmare Green we got Case Nightmare Red and it's nightmare(s) indeed! We know that something has happened to Mo so she is no longer in Mhairi's life (must have been in the aftermath of giving up the violin and becoming a Senior Auditor). And while Bob makes a quick cameo, we know very little about how he's been since the change in leadership but it can't be good given what the changes are that are currently being implemented.
So it's Mhairi, Officer Friendly, Pete and Brains and a few other agents. And the Americans.
Because in this volume we deal with the Americans apparently forgetting all about the Executive Branch of their governemnt. Yep, the guy whose title starts with a "P". Almost all of us shudder at the moment about him in real life but I was delighted how the author mixed social/political commentary through dark humour with soothing commentary about the office itself. Thus, Mhairi and her team go to the States and encounter a very well organized plot (though the American version of the Laundry isn't entirely helpless) leading to a race for who can find and "secure" the President first so the Sleeper in the Pyramid will remain just that: a sleeper. You know, instead of waking up and causing the extinction of the human race.

The series has become quite dark indeed and it can only get darker. No daisies and sunshine in the future, I don't think. It's unclear, at this point, if there will be some form of nice ending, but I'm really enjoying the ride regardless. The magic system is not only cool but also funny as hell (the blend of technology with what we expect to be magic), every action has consequences, being a vampire or superhero has some heavy side-effects (and not only positive ones such as "enhanced dental assets") and every story thread is intricately woven into an intelligent tapestry of a story.
The way the author can make me care deeply for people I've only read about for a page or two (such as one of the President's Secret Service agents) is seriously awesome. To say nothing of him managing to almost make me like Mhairi and Jim! But I will need therapy soon because of all the tragic things happening (Pete being the worst in this volume).

I'm really in love with this series and the world created in it. And now the wait begins ...

[Jacqie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a copy of this book for review.

It's weird to think of a book describing the Lovecraftian singularity as comfort reading, yet it is for me. At least, I reach for the Laundry Files whenever I need a sure thing, a book I know I'll like and read as fast as I can. Thank you, Charles Stross, for continuing to turn these out regularly! This one came along just when I needed it.

Bob and Mo do not appear in this book except very briefly. Mhari the HR vampire (no, really, she's a vampire) is the POV character. Stross has leveled up Bob and Mo to the point where they realistically aren't going to be seeing a lot of the action that makes reading a book like this fun. I have a feeling that when the apocalypse really gets rolling they'll be called to action again, but for now the stakes aren't world-endingly high, although things are pretty terrible. When Nyarlathotep is your best best for the creature to ally with as least likely to end humanity because he at least thinks humans are kind of fun to play with and useful minions, you know you're in a bad way.

Mhari (and all the UK) are now Nyarlathotep's to use as he pleases. And he pleases to send Mhari along with a team of expendables to the US. The President is no longer remembered by any of the public that he is supposed to lead, and this is a Bad Sign that yet another super-powerful eldritch horror is making its move.

I don't want to talk too much about the plot because that's enough spoilers, really. I do want to talk about what works for me with these books. Stross has got the knack of ramping up tension and of creating a just-sideways world that is endlessly fascinating. In this universe, everyone's doomed, really. They are just raging against the dying of the light, trying to hold on as long as they can before everyone's soul is spun into a power grid for gibbering horrors to snack upon. It feels a bit too close for comfort in this year of kleptocracy, blatant treasonous behavior by our leaders and indifference to it by their minions, climate change denial, and evil coming out into the open again, eager for blood. We're all doomed, really.

Or are we? Mhari hints just slightly that something's in the works that she's not able to share, some desperate play that may keep hope alive in the future. That's not the purpose of this book, though.

So, it was fun. Best Laundry book ever? No. Mhari has a guy that she calls Fuckboy through the entire book- I didn't find this amusing any more than I'd find a guy character calling his main squeeze Fuckgirl, in other words not at all. The plot's a bit all over the place, and it's hard to put the pieces together. But that's part of the point of a Stross book- a bunch of stuff that looks random that ends up falling into place in a really cool way. You just keep reading along faster and faster for that Aha moment. It's darkly funny, it's poignant, it's just a bit challenging, and I'll keep reading them as fast as they come out.

[C.T. Phipps · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE LABYRINTH INDEX is probably the book which is the most like a James Bond pastiche after a long period of the series poo-pooing on the very concept. It stars an arrogant sexist protagonist who fights against a sinsiter cartel with a world-ending scheme that doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense. The big difference being that Mhari is a woman sexist against men (referring to her boyfriend and partner as "****boy" for most of the novel) plus she has a team of minor Laundry characters accompanying her on a mission. In that respect, it's more like the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movies.

I can't be too hard on Charles Stross because he's reversed one of his earlier decrees of the Laundry when he declared that everything from Howard Phillips Lovecraft was true(ish) other than the existence of Cthulhu, who he calls Old Bat Wings. Charles said that was the one element of the series which wasn't true--and is apparently now like vampires in that he was totally lying. Cthulhu's presence is revealed early on and he is also revealed to be the master of a longtime group of petty antagonists for the Laundry in the Black Chamber.

In this book, Mhari is dispatched by the Prime Minister (Mr. Everyman who is basically Johm Simm's Master with godlike power and a hatred for all Jews--which include Christians and Muslims BTW) to the Americas. Someone has wiped the President of the United States from its 300 million citizens' memories and this is probably the prelude to something bad. Much gunplay, shoggoth summoning, and character growth for Mhari occurs. We also get snapshots into other characters views on events.

Charles Stross has been struggling to keep the Laundry relevant with the cataclysmic weirdness in politics these past few years and this is the book he finally gives up on. Brexit, Trump, and other contemporary issues flat out don't exist in the Laundryverse now with a fictional new heroic President taking their place while the U.K. has bigger issues than its withdrawal from the EU. It's probably for the best but costs the series some of its meticulously researched realism. Then again, I suppose that went out the window with K-syndrome superheroes and PHANGS.

The short version is this book is...okay. I give props for the use of the Black Chamber, Cthulhu, American military history, and the return of characters I like such as Peter. However, the fact Stross writes his heroes as overtly evil (siding with Nyarlathotep versus Cthulhu is even namechecked as "Stalin over Hitler" but that's not exactly reassuring). A bit like Mo in The Annihilation Score, Mhari is a deeply unpleasant person. While she undergoes some character growth, it seems consistent Stross prefers to write his men as nardy and devoted to their partners while the women are overtly dismissive to them when not doing "necessary" evils. It showed up in The Nightmare Stacks as
well.

So, it was okay, I guess? I think the series has lost a lot of its charm without Bob Howard and none of the other protagonists really work well. I liked Mhari more than Mo and she's probably the second best protagonist but this feels like the kind of fiction which Charles Stross used to mock in earlier books and that's a bit odd to now have to take completely straight.

6.5/10

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is in full effect. The UK is under the New Management, an ancient evil only slightly less horrible than the alternatives and the USA seems to be undergoing a similar change with the President missing.

Mhari Murphy has been tapped by the new resident of 10 Downing St to reform the Special Operations Executive (SOE), an early predecessor organization of the Laundry and assigns her to deal with the American problem. With a collection of political undesirables and skilled expendables, Mhari leads a force into the US on a mission to deal with the President and confront the Black Chamber, the occult organization that's now in charge and who have Very Big Plans.

Mhari remains an interesting character as she tries to survive the new world where she's a pawn in a chess match between titanic forces and her own personal life is maintained by a steady stream of victims required to feed her vampirism. After a bleak couple of books it's also great to see a way out for the Laundry and the rest of humanity, however vaguely it's hinted at here. The payoff for this multi-book setup should be awesome.

Stross maintains the excellent standard of the series with an engaging story in its own right along with cutting political and social commentary and satire.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 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.

[Alex Sarll]

Stross has recently been describing the Laundry Files as taking place in an even darker timeline than our own, which puzzles me. I mean, yes, there's an elder god in Downing Street, but at least he's one of the competent ones, not the gaggle of the mindless, gibbering variety with which we seem to be lumbered. And this is a Britain where the stupid and dangerous privatisation of a government agency (to wit, our occult counter-espionage department, the aforementioned Laundry) has just been *stopped*! Positively utopian. Granted, the US seems to have been taken over by the forces of darkness – but again, same here, and at least in the Laundry Files timeline there's a plan to deal with that which goes beyond hoping for a blue wave. Because frankly, sending in an office worker turned vampire turned life peer (undeath peer?) seems a far more plausible fix than trusting to the American electoral landscape suddenly flipping sane again. In the meantime, everyone seems to have forgotten the President exists – don't you wish we could? As here, the looming threat to the viability of human life on Earth has now gone from 'looming' to 'actively causing death and disaster' – but in the book, the threat is being taken seriously at the highest level. As here, Britain is exiting the EU – but in the book, it's being done in an orderly fashion and for defined reasons (it makes it easier to resume human sacrifices), rather than through a hazy, duplicitous entanglement of fifties nostalgia and hedge fund shenanigans. Hell, these lucky bastards even still have Concorde!

Alas, it's not all the jolly jape that sunny set-up might suggest. I mean, yes, lots of people die horribly, but that was always the case. For me the real problem is that said vampire life peer, Mhari, proves to be a much less sympathetic narrator than her predecessors. Nothing to do with being female, or one of the undead (in a support role, autistic vampire elf mage Yarisol is awesome); everything to do with her being one of those people who actually seem to enjoy office life. This is a stark contrast with the narrators of the previous books, all of whom were the sort of people who grudgingly end up working in office environments because capitalism. Or as I usually think of them, 'people'.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a slow start, and almost-fatal damage to my WSOD —N’yar Lat-Hotep (aka the Black Pharaoh) as PM !— Stross almost pulls this one off with a rousing finish. I never really believed the Concorde rescue-scheme could actually work, though I don’t doubt the precursors Stross researched, and his writing is as good as ever. I just don’t like this series very much. Even less since almost none of the principal characters are human anymore. Well, Mhari Murphy sort-of is, but I don’t much like her, either. Still, it’s a good yarn, and readers who have liked the Laundry series so far should (probably) read it. For me, 3.5 stars counting in the fireworks at the end, rounded down for the implausibility of the premise. Plus I don’t like horror, really, and this one gets pretty gross. And the American setting didn’t quite ring true. I hope he goes back to writing space opera again soon.

The best long, detailed review I saw was Brit Mandelo’s, which has some SPOILERS: https://www.tor.com/2018/11/01/book-r... He liked it more than I did. In particular, he liked Stross’s political stuff, and I didn’t.

And here’s a good short one: https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comm...

[Soo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes:

Yay for libraries!

I am now caught up with Laundry Files and kinda sad about that. Mhari's POV was pretty good! A couple of slow spots in the story and the US was not in a "good" light for the plot. I still prefer Bob's POV for the stories. =)

[rixx · Rating 4 out of 5]

**The Labyrinth Index**, the latest entry in *Charlie Stross*' Laundry Files series … escalates. When the last volume of the Laundry Files ended fairly apocalyptic, I was under the impression that Charlie was fed up with reality overtaking his books pre-publication, and escalated to a level reality isn't yet willing to follow.

The Labyrinth Index introduces Mhari as the protagonist and POV character, which I found refreshing and nice. Laundry protagonists are a bit chancy, for me – Mo was part great, part meh, and Alex was 90% annoying. Mhari is about as good as Mo, for me, and maybe a bit more evenly written (or the transition to yet-another-protagonist is less jarring than to the first non-Bob one). Bob and Mo are not part of this story, btw – we accompany Mhari on a field mission to the US, where the conflicts between the UK's new Lord and the US' new Lord are dunked out.

I enjoyed the plot, which is fast-paced and surprisingly well-explained. Maybe it's my imagination, but I think the recent Laundry books leave less to the reader's deductive reasoning and explain and show more in detail what's actually going on. Instead, the subtle clues now concern side action that will mostly become relevant in a later volume. Like the last book, a lot of characters are drawn from previous books, but it's more of a solid recurring cast, and less of a "Use ALL the characters", which we had last time.

As usually, the book is well paced (and by that I mean: escalating consistently), well-researched, clever, and plain fun. It goes deeper into gross and disgusting aspects of the Elder Management than previously, which can be a bit graphic (not that I'm complaining, just as a heads-up to other readers). It may not be the best Laundry book, but it meets all my expectations and then some.

[Matthew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Imagine if a male character refered to his partner as slut or f$%^toy or some other derogitory name all the time. No need for it. Stross's work unfortunetly has gotten worse. Such a shame as it was an awesome series

[Redsteve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just when you thought that things can't get any worse in the Laundry universe (Delerium Brief #8 ended with the Laundry dissolved and Fabian Everyman, aka "The Mandate", aka The Black Pharaoh N'yar Llat-hotep becoming Prime Minister of the UK). But in this world, things can ALWAYS get worse as events approach CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN (aka the Lovecraft Singularity). and the Black Chamber (the Laundry's opposite number in the US) plots the awakening of Cthulhu, with a first step making the entire US population forget that the President (not just the individual, but the entire office) exists*. And things go downhill from there. This one grabbed me immediately and held my interest through the end. The story is ambitious, exciting and weird, combining Mythos horror with tech-intensive spy thriller elements in the best tradition of the Laundry Files. Again, Stross has changed the main character; in this installment the primary POV is Mhari Murphy, vampire HR specialist and now member of the House of Lords (earlier protagonists Bob, Mo, and Alex either do not appear at all or have brief walk-on roles in this one). My only quibble about The Labyrinth Index is the way the POV and time skip around; I'll accept that a lot of it was necessary to get the story to unspool properly, but in some places it felt a bit disjointed. 4.5 stars.


*not going into detail (spoilers) but did anyone notice a parallel between the President as a focus for belief and the Hogfather in Pratchett's novel of the same name?

[Cobwebs-Iced-Across-SpaceTime · Rating 5 out of 5]

#9 in Charles Stross' THE LAUNDRY FILES Lovecraftian Horror/Urban Fantasy Series, stars Mhairi Murphy, Baroness Karnstein, rather than the usual Series main character, Bob Howard. Following ESCAPE FROM YOKAI LAND, Bob is still occupied elsewhere, and this time Mhairi runs an operation specifically tasked by the British Prime Minister--an Elder God.
Apparently the American populace has misplaced the current President, not by choice nor by political ideology, but by mass amnesia. A magical geas created by a deeply covert government agency has clouded minds to forget the Presidency, and attempts to eradicate any mention of the Executive Branch from history! The intent is to imminently awaken the Lord of Sleep, Cthulhu! The Prime Minister won't countenance the return of his rival, so a small British task force including an autistic elven mage springs into action.

As always in this Series, almost any mythological or Fantastical entity one can imagine might be put into play. So suspend disbelief and toss out logic; buckle in for a wild ride across the Big Pond and across the North American continent.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sigh. Not one of the better Laundry books. Not the best characters, in fact really kind of hard to like any of the characters in this one. Even Brains and Pete are poorly used. Silly, but not in a good way. But not truly done badly. Stross is always interesting and this book is not an exception. And the book is always plausible if just barely so. But not an especially fast or enjoyable read.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ack! These are so complex now that I almost need to reread the entire series when each new book comes out. Mental note to do that before the next one... This one was mainly from Mhari's POV after the shocking developments of book 8 have had a chance to sink in a little bit.

[Z-squared · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this! This restored my love of the series. And unlike Mo's book, this one shows how to write a flawed female MC without making the reader want to strangle her. I was really on the bubble on the series prior to this one, but now? I'm dying to see where it goes next!

[David Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book (thanks Nazia!)

Stross's Laundry Files are now, I think, his most numerous and long lasting series, running to eight or nine novels (with The Labyrinth Index) and several novellas and short stories (depending how you count the stories in The Atrocity Archives, the first book).

While always having at its centre The Laundry itself, the UK's occult service ("occult secret service" would be a tautology, no?) which is lovingly portrayed with all its bureaucratic quirks and terrors, the books really come into their own in disassembling and rebuilding the Lovecraft mythos to fit a world of coders, geeks and cubicles. Stross has lots of fun with this (and with geek culture more generally) but there's no disguising the cosmic horror that increasingly hangs over these books.

As The Labyrinth Index opens with a particularly chilling execution scene, CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is active and the Laundry has fallen, with the Black Pharaoh, N'yar Lat-Hotep, assuming power as the UK's Prime Minister. The New Management is in charge, the lesser of two evils, apparently. Well, at least it's a change from the previous Government, and should liven things up? They can't really be that bad?

I mean, things can't get any worse, can they?

Can they...?

I really take my hat off to the way Stross has followed through the logic of power politics to root his Lovecraftian singularity in a firmly credible, modern day setting. The world of the Laundry Files is not all crazed cultists in the woods but well-financed televangelists, crooked bankers and, of course, venal politicians. Very much like our own. And over the series the cast of characters in these books has expanded to reflect this, Stross introducing not only new human members of the Laundry staff but elves, vampires and superheroes too, all of it plausibly done with explanations for everything rooted in the idea that computation is magic.

In The Labyrinth Index, the Prime Minister commands His servants to investigate why the US President has gone missing. A complex, if desperate plan is devised to infiltrate the United States (with the US equivalent of the Laundry referred to as the Nazgûl, the line "One does not simply walk into Mordor" can be deployed unironically...) The activity here is underpinned by the usual meticulous degree of research, and it could, you know, all perfectly well work, given the premise of computational demonology.

Central to all this is Mhairi, the PHANG who did actually appear in The Atrocity Archives but then faded from sight for a while. She has the central role in this book, as Baroness Karnstein, the new PM's fixer but is supported by, for the first time, pretty much everyone we've met so far (including an elven vampire necromancer who's on the autistic spectrum. Great to meet you, Marisol!) In fact almost the only regular characters we see little of are Bob, who has new responsibilities as avatar of the Eater of Souls, and Mo. Hopefully they'll be back again soon but in the meantime it's good to see this story told through other eyes. Mhairi is an engaging lead, concealing a fair amount of her history from us but also clearly wracked by shock and guilt that she has to consume blood to live.

Guilt is fairly widespread in fact as the very act of submitting to N'yar Lat-Hotel takes its toll, even if He is a relatively sparing Lord. In the USA the Black Chamber have taken a different tack, and for once it's hard to argue that our friends in the Laundry are on firmer moral ground, even if the entity they deal with seems less far reaching in His evil. All choices are bad, everything leads to ruin, seems to be the subtext.

But while the world merrily rattles off to Hell in its accelerating handcart, we can still have some fun - the bone violin plays a good jig - and The Labyrinth Index serves plenty of that up, whether you're into a solid, clever plot, sly humour with a point (there's a running gag about the problems in the US - when people go to sleep, they forget who the President is, allowing his enemies to write him out of reality. So there are plenty of allusions to those who know what's going as being "awake"... but not everyone wants to be awake...) or just excellent storytelling.

At the same time, the book moves us forward into Stross's Apocalypse. The tipping point in this universe was reached, I think, a couple of books ago, but so far it hasn't been clear what exact form the catastrophe might take. Now things seem to be getting clearer, and the pace picking up.

In short this series shows no sign of tailing off, rather it seems to be getting stronger and stronger. I really can't wait to see what Stross serves up next.

[Wing Kee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably my favorite in the series to date!

World: The world building is dense, there are a lot of moving parts, a lot of Lovecraftian jargon, a lot of characters and locations and sometimes it can overwhelm readers. However, if you take the time and you slowly absorb it and go along for this journey this world building is pretty amazing. There is some info dumping, readers will feel a bit lost but the results are so good. This world is so very interesting and Stross has really made it his own, from Lovecraft to Strossian now with the pieces and the tone and the tone and scope, this world is awesome. The new locale of the United States also added a very fresh layer to the series and gave us a larger world view to the series which I really enjoyed.

Story: This story is dense, there are a lot of characters and there are times I felt overwhelmed but the story was really well done. It's a well executed simple spy book and the world that it plays out on is pretty amazing. Mhari and her group, the Secret Service, The Black Chamber, all of them are interesting and the story jumps between them well. The dialog is great and Mhari's point of view was great for the tone of the book. I really enjoyed how each story thread payed off and really moved this world forward. There was a good ending and also a promise for more larger things in the future and it really made me enjoy this world all the more.

Characters: Mhari is a great character, her personal voice is strong and she is flawed and conflicted like any real character and her journey in this book was pretty fun to read. Her point of view and sense of humor also made a very grim book rather enjoyable. The entire cast of characters from this book was pretty fantastic, from her team to the Black Chamber to the Secret Service and the radio station it was all really well done. There were a lot of characters and sometimes I felt a bit too much but it was worth it and the story plays out wonderfully cause these characters were interesting.

I really liked the plot so I'm being really vague but if you've read enough Laundry Books by now you don't need to read reviews, your gonna read this book anyways! It's a good one!

Onward to the next book!

[David Wintheiser · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first Laundry Files book where we see the aftereffect of the Faustian bargain made by the leaders of the Laundry to save themselves from annihilation at the tentacles of the Sleeper in the Pyramid. This book also gives us a longer look than most other books into the workings of the Operational Phenomenology Agency, a.k.a.: the Black Chamber, the lords of which have been consistently referred to in other Laundry works as the Nasgul.

It's a curious and timely book, with a significant focus on the ceremonial and symbolic power of the office of the U.S. Presidency, and I can't help but wonder if the release date is deliberate in the hopes that Stross's fans finish the book quickly and be motivated to vote in the upcoming real-world mid-term U.S. elections. (Stross himself is a Scottish citizen, and has stated publicly that he will not be traveling to the U.S. while the current administration remains in power.)

My only real criticism is that Stross, as other authors will popular long-running series do, seems unwilling to leave his key characters to suffer the full impact of the dire things that happen to them. We are re-introduced to a number of characters we've met in previous stories, plus a couple of new characters introduced just for this tale, and the entire group is sent on what is effectively a suicide mission, yet nearly every character survives (though most are definitely changed by their experience). Stross seems to be teasing an acceleration of a trope he's used in previous stories -- that the survival of the protagonists can leave them in a position that's worse than if they'd perished -- yet if Stross does not begin closing the book on some of these characters soon, the final book in the series is going to be catastrophically depressing as everyones' negative circumstances come crashing down upon them and the world simultaneously.

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just as the series started veering towards “monster of the week” material, the previous book ended on a massive U-turn bang, and now we have a rather fine spy-thriller with occult tradecraft practiced in a universe where the Lovecraftian singularity is on the upswing and a dread elder god is running the UK. The weird thing for me is the extent to which a more or less traditional spy thriller formula slips seamlessly into a Lovecraft-infused universe, and of course, as no doubt many have mentioned already, how much preferable living under the rule of ruthlessly competent Black Pharaoh seems in comparison to the bumbling set of nincompoop lizards in human skins currently steering the UK towards what from an outside perspective looks like an assured utter disaster.

Stross is his usual strossian self, but the writing does show a few cracks here and there – one is the fact that this deep in a series and with year-long breaks between books having so many characters with short “nicknamey” names, (some of them sporting several - the alfar blood mage in particular) made it difficult to accurately keep track of who was who. Furthermore, weaving meme phrases through the narrative is a given in a Stross novel, but with the memeverse on an accelerating (meme-singularity?) path some of the ones he fires off come off as stale/clichéd/already half-forgotten. Nevertheless, these are minor quips for a book I blew through with pleasure in three days (and nights) of reading.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey Stross is still kicking butt with these books. Even though good old Bob was nowhere to be found in this book, we have the same kind of adventures of civil servants fighting or perhaps abetting the Elder Gods. Somehow the president is missing and it's up to Mhari to save the day. You probably could start with the series by reading this book but I'd recommend starting at the beginning.

[Ernest · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Laundry Files continue, but possibly they're past their sell-by date.

What started as a clever set of spy pastiches starring a relateable IT guy thrust into the worlds of spycraft and supernatural horror with a brilliant premise - that magic is driven by math and the advent of computers meant that Lovecraftian horrors heard the dinner bell ringing - has at this point gone on long enough that Stross is now mining minor characters for stories and seems to have dropped the pastiche concept which was so clear in early books like "The Jennifer Morgue" which consciously used the story structure for a Bond novel, albeit with a lovely twist at the end.

Here, we follow Mhari Murphy, a new -age vampire in the employ of the Laundry, who winds up being a direct report to the Prime Minister and given the job of setting up a division to work covertly in the US, because it's become worrisome that the President has gone missing. Not just missing, but he's disappeared for the conscious awareness of everyone in America, which requires some pretty high-level magic. Oh, I forgot to mention that the PM is a high-level demon these days, so he's worried about the same sort of thing happening to the US, which might limit his sphere of action.

So ensues a sort of Mission Impossible scenario where the UK team, composed of spycraft newbies to keep them from being recognized, infiltrates the US in various places and on various missions to find, rescue, and possibly co-opt the President.

It's not bad, but it's not the original quill either. Back when we were all gearing up for the possible invasion of Lovecraftian horrors (Case Nightmare Green) it was all good fun in a secret history sort of way, but now that we're downstream from the invasion the story has become unmoored from our reality and consequently less engaging. It's a fate that comes to all paradigm-shifting stories, where the prelude and conflict are interesting, but the aftermath slips off the track.

Just for fun, I read this on vacation in London, mostly a stone's throw from the houses of Parliment, and with Brexit protesters on the streets below me. The setting helped, but only so much.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stross has made me empathize with a vampire. A vampire who, when she was human, appeared to be a sociopath. Who used to be the HR manager for a bunch of quants. And who is now a baroness and Nyarlothotep's executioner. Stross is amazing.

The Laundry Files have always been dark. Since at least the days of Queen Elizabeth I, it seems, the Brits have been keeping demons on the payroll for the greater good, James Bonding their way to save humanity from worst demons. Now they've installed an elder god as PM. He's deemed, correctly, the lesser of eldritch evils in a world where the Americans are attempting to wake up Cthulhu and install him in the president-sized hole the Black Chamber made when it made almost all Americans forget we ever had three branches of government.

The PM has sent his executioner, Mhari Murphy, to extract the president -- possibly for his skull -- and to chat with Cthulhu. Wackiness ensues.

While the Laundry Files have always been dark, this one seemed darker. Might just be the stakes are more immediate. Cthulhu could eat the world if he wakes up and it seems the entire might of the US intelligence services have been turned to wake up duties. Our friendly eldritch god, the PM, is planning a monument of skulls in London. Mhari Murphy is a superhero surrounded by superheroes and she is absolutely terrified.

A tale for our times.

[Cale · Rating 4 out of 5]

One thing I have to complain about for the Laundry Files - the names aren't very indicative of the books themselves. While there is a Labyrinth that plays into the plot a little bit, it makes it hard to keep track of the books (I just discovered that I missed the Annihilation Score). But that's pretty much the worst criticism I have.
Mhari makes for a strong protagonist as she leads a deep cover assignment of expendables on a multi-level goal into America. The story is told like a heist, with a lot of flashbacks and secrets only revealed at the last minute, but it is pretty riveting. There's a side story that goes to Colorado that is interesting if ultimately pretty incidental to the overall plot, but it gets us Pete and Brains in a short buddy-cop scenario (and their third makes for some of the funniest situations in the book). But Mhari and her V-Parasites and her boyfriend Jim (whose nickname is a bit much for me) get into a fair bit of action; the climax isn't quite as impressive as The Nightmare Stacks but it definitely has some very strong moments.
I think the biggest issue I had with this book is outside of its control. In the current political climate, the central issue that is affecting America actually sounds like a net positive. I think Stross acknowledges that briefly in the epilogue, but it does kind of undercut some of the stakes of this particular volume.
Still, it's a good book; I was a little worried about not having Bob front and center, but Mhari is more than capable of carrying the story, to the point that I look forward to seeing where she goes from here. This series has changed a lot over the years, but is still very enjoyable, just in a different way than the earlier volumes were.

[Bentgaidin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling page-turner in the espionage thriller tradition, with added occult menace and more vampires than you can shake a stick at. America's president has been vanished - removed from the memory of every human citizen - and so Madhi, businesswoman, vampire, and occasional secret agent, has been tasked by the dark god posing as Britain's Prime Minister to assemble a team of politically expendable agents to resolve this problem, one way or another. There's a lot going on here - unfortunately probably just a _bit_ too much to recommend this as a jumping-on point for the series - but Stross keeps things moving along without letting the story get bogged down in the weeds of the occult End-of-Days that his world is tangled up in. And once it's going, like any good spy thriller there are plot twists, surprising revelations, gadget geekery, and questions of how one can know if you're _really_ working for the good guys. I read this over the course of two nights, and highly enjoyed it; the whole series is worth it for Lovecraftian spies, the banality of occult tech support, vampires, mermaids, and even the occasional superhero in a steadily darkening world.

[Cathy Turley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book and the previous one are some of the better realized ones in the series so far. Maybe because they were written by a Brit and I’m an American, but while I found the earlier books fun, the endings were too complicated so I couldn’t tell exactly what happened. This one was a romp and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Imagine a world where elder gods aren’t myths but actual entities, beginning to wake and control events in modern life. Imagine magic can be formulated and therefore computers are powerful tools for magicians. Smart phones can run protection wards and even offensive spells. Oh, and vampirism is caused by magical parasites and some people have super powers!

A continuation of the Laundry series, featuring Mahri, a British civil servant and recent vampire sent on a mission to rescue the President of the United States. This book features familiar tropes such as crazy call-in shows, government spooks in suits, right over might; with a twist—the Brits, not the Americans save the day.

I’ve read that Charles Stross is a former computer programmer. I love how he combines magic with computing. Yet, I feel his writing is from a very male perspective—and while I enjoyed having a female narrator in this book, I can’t say he pulled it off 100% convincingly. As my husband said, Charles Stross is one author he wishes would stop doing sex scenes.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was kind of surprised how much I enjoyed this book when it is clearly a transitional book leading to the next major arc of the ongoing story.

Mhairi is our protagonist this time, and I'm kind of prejudiced against her because of Bob's comments way, way, way back at the beginning of the series. This is totally unfair since Bob was both biased and not a reliable narrator and she's developed and changed a lot since then. And in this book, she's marvellous. She's full of imposter syndrome and the awareness she's disposable in the eyes of the "New Management" in charge of Britain, yet she takes on the challenge, manages to pull off the mission and even survive. I need to get over it.

There's a hint of an even more apocalyptic future (what were the Elder Gods running for that put them in our part of the universe?) and a hint of possible hope for humanity, although I guess we don't dare count on the latter.

Yes, it's a transitional book, but it's also an excellent book. More please.

[Doctor Science · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up.

On the one hand, the world of the Laundry Files is careering closer to existential collapse, as Dread Nyarlathotep is now Prime Minister of the UK, and the US is experiencing a coup by the Really Deep State, angling to summon Cthulu itself. And our POV character is a vampire torn between horror at what she's become and the worse horrors she's working to forestall.

On the other hand, the President of the US is intelligent, competent, and NOT a tool of alien forces.

So it's a world of eldritch horror (and bureaucratic humor), but it's also unrealistically hopeful. Nor does the plot deal with the fact that, no matter how intelligent etc. a President may be, at least 35% of the people in the US hate him like poison, that's just a given.

So, my feelings are mixed: appreciation/chills for the horror, but also a feeling that this is Too Easy, that reality overtook Stross and passed him.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, that escalated quickly.

With Bob stuck in a box marked "open only in case of apocalypse", the new POV character is Mhari, previously seen contracting a nasty case of vampirism and then parlaying it into a top job. This isn't a side story though: with that apocalypse very clearly looming on the horizon, the many actors - human or otherwise - are jockeying for position, and Mhari is tasked by the New Management of the UK with finding out exactly what the Americans are up to, and let's just say the main plot gets significantly advanced here, with a lot of old threads being woven together here to satisfying effect. The concept of what's going on in the US made me both chuckle and wince simultaneously (while the situation in the UK just made me wince). I'm not sure that the situation set up in the first two-thirds gets quite the resolution it deserves, but possibly that's because it was such a clever idea that rounding it off is a tall order. Nevertheless, this is still a high point in the later Laundry books and if you're a fan of the series you should grab it immediately.