This is a guy who knows what I go through on a daily basis! (You’ll know my boss has discovered this blog if I start blogging next week about being suddenly unemployed.) I found all of Bob’s bitchings about timekeeping reports and time wasting procedures to be especially entertaining and biting. I certainly don’t work for a government agency, but my current employer has gone through a lot of growing pains lately, and a 20% increase in staff (yay! more jobs!) has created a ten-fold increase in reports, manuals, trainings, and conference calls. The Laundry is a standard bureaucratic government agency, with policies and procedures for everything from requisitioning a SWAT team to reporting lost paperclips. If you’re the scientist who hits on which variable and what to change it to, you can expect a call from The Laundry. Mathematics are the name of the game here, where changing a variable gets you from pie are squared to Azathoth coming up your bathtub drain. It looks like fantasy horror, but The Laundry books are really hard scifi thrillers. We learn how Bob got “invited” to join the Laundry, his bachelor-esque life before Mo, and how many mainline supervisors he had to piss off to end up in Angleton’s office.
The Atrocity Archives is where it all begins (well, not where it all begins, but you know what I mean). For god sakes, these books are how I got into Cthulhu mythos in the first place! and what isn’t explained in easy to understand language is glossed over in purposely arcane and sometimes sarcastic infodumps. IT jokes? Lovecraftian horrors? If you’re not into IT or Cthulhu, don’t worry, there’s no experience needed to enjoy The Laundry. So good in fact, that he can’t help but get involved when things go to shit, especially when the jackass from accounting gets himself possessed by a Lovecraftian intelligence during a training class. Bob’s problem is that he’s way too good at what he does. Bob is your average IT professional, a super nerdy guy who spends his days checking the network for viruses, keeping spam out your e-mail, and avoiding his supervisor, which is totally okay because she’s an absolute bitch. He doesn’t kick ass, he can’t keep his roommates from trashing the house, and cops are embarrassed if they have to work with him. For fans of Stross’s Laundry series this is a must-read, and if you’re not a fan, start with the 2nd or 3rd book in the series, work your way backwards, and then you’ll be a fan, so you’ll want to read it.īob Howard is not a hero.
closer to last year)įinally! I have finally read the first Laundry novel! and learned two things: You can read these out of order and do just fine, and the first book is decent but not the best in the series. Where I got it: purchased new (not in 2004. The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross (The Laundry Files, book 1, also includes the novella The Concrete Jungle)
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