#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.

Mhari Murphy, Baroness Karnstein under the New Management, is tasked by the Prime Minister with reactivating the SOE under wartime rules. She is then tasked with using assigned personnel to rescue the President of the US of A from the Nazguls that have launched a coup and lead said task herself. The pleasure with the Laundry series is seeing how Charles Stross will work the tropes of Lovecraft horror, British spycraft, geek culture and alien possession into story that hangs together long enough for you to reach the end of the book. And he manages to do it again without Bob Howard once again. If you are into this series, you will not want to miss this title. If you are just starting, you would do better to start with The Atrocity Archives and work your way up.

This did not end up being the book for me, unfortunately. I'm a fan of Stross's alternate world novels, but comedy is a much more difficult sell for me--regardless of authorship, really. So, no shade at Stross, he's highly competent and I'm sure his pop culture references are on point, but I didn't make it past the first chapter of this particular one because it's not the right time or place for me to go there.

The Labyrinth Index is the 9th book in the Laundry Files series by Charles Stross. Released 30th Oct 2018 by Tor, it's 384 pages and available in hardback, paperback, audio, and ebook formats.

This is a Lovecraftian horror SF wrapped in biting social commentary on our current political dystopia. Stross is at his most acerbically sarcastic and if there's an author with more raw talent at fusing political satire with fantasy, I am not familiar with them. In a lot of ways, these books remind me of Joseph Heller (Catch-22) and there are some interesting parallels: farcical tragedy, theodicy (in fact, the Old Gods in charge are only marginally the lesser of the evils), as well as a subtle sense of impending doom no matter what the characters do or what their motivations. The dichotomy of real and creeping horror combined with literally laugh out loud humour is brilliant and kept me enthralled.

This book works well as a standalone, though it would take some effort to come up to speed with what's going on, it's not an insurmountable hurdle. I felt like I needed an illustrated guide even though I've read from the first book forwards. The main protagonist in this entry is Mhari (Bob from the first book's ex-girlfriend). There is a fair bit of sexism, treated humorously, as well as broadsides against nationalism, patriotism, universal government incompetence and malfeasance, gender relations, and humanoid society as a whole.

The language is rough, the violence graphic, the humour (mostly) bitingly sarcastic. I winced every time Mhari referred to her 'strictly physical' sexual partner (superhero/DCS Jim Grey) as f*ckboy. It just doesn't scan well to me and yanked me out of my suspension of disbelief every time. Stross is -so- talented with nicknames and sarcastic characterizations that I'm absolutely sure he -meant- to call him that for some reason, but it was a poke in the eyeball every one of the 28 times it happened. I believe it was precisely because it was objectifying and distancing that Stross wrote it that way (to show that Mhari, despite being a soulless creature of the night, etc etc, really cared much more than she wanted to admit). I also love all the acronyms; one of my fave bits of the series.

Four stars, well worth a read, even as a standalone.

The Lovecraftian Singularity has descended upon the world. The British support one side in the supernatural struggle for supremacy and the US supports another. In the US, a magical geas has made everyone forget the president in an effort to awaken the Sleeping God. But the British work to kidnap the President and bring him safely to England to thwart this. It is up to Mhari and her team of vampires to get into Washington without being detected and kidnap the President. Bob Howard is barely mentioned and the book suffers because of this. Mhari is good, but I like Bob better.

Published by Tor.com on October 30, 2018

I’m not really into stories about vampires and demons, but Charles Stross is such a good writer that I make an exception for his Laundry Files novels. And while I generally prefer science fiction to fantasy, I have to admit I couldn’t wrap my head around Stross’ Accelerando or Glasshouse, two novels that are acclaimed for their ideas, which are plentiful, although plot and characterization are largely sacrificed for the sake of stuffing the books full of Stross’ notions of what the future might hold. The universe in which the Laundry Files series is set is rich and layered, but Stross also devotes some effort to creating action-adventure plots that are always entertaining.

The novels imagine a British spy agency (the Laundry) that protects the nation from occult threats. Magic is both a weapon and a defense, although the magic is equation-based. The American counterpart (the OPA), sometimes known as the Black Chamber, is not well liked by Laundry operatives (American Postal Inspectors of the occult are more welcome). Early books focused on a character named Bob Howard, but more recent books tend to have ensemble casts. The occult threats grow in number and power with each new novel. The protagonists tend to be vampires who are (sort of) under the British government’s control. At this point, however, the British government is under the control of a dark and sinister power. The Prime Minister has been replaced by an incarnation of the Black Pharaoh, as The Delirium Brief explains in detail. Even darker powers are on the horizon.

The vampire protagonist in The Labyrinth Index is Mhari Murphy. Murphy is working as an executioner for the British government, among her other duties as a highly placed official in New Management. Executions are a necessity because vampires need a blood supply. For dire reasons that earlier novels explain, the Laundry has been officially disbanded but Murphy performs chores as assigned by the new PM.

The PM is convinced (and he might be right) that nonhuman entities are taking over America’s Executive Branch. He assigns Murphy to build a team that will infiltrate the USA and gather intelligence, since the president is no longer answering the phone. He also tasks her with rescuing (e.g., kidnapping) the president, if he is still sufficiently human to be worth the bother. Finding him is complicated by the fact that Americans have blissfully forgotten that they even have a president, creating a void that the forces of evil plan to fill by waking a sleeping god, Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. Murphy does her best with the assistance of other characters, although the PM may have had an ulterior motive for sending her on her mission.

Stross’ smart, tongue-in-cheek prose and the vivid universe he has created are the primary reasons to read these novels. It’s impossible to take this kind of story seriously and Stross wisely relies on humor and action to keep the reader entertained. Murphy telling a demon’s assistant that she demands diplomatic immunity is priceless. Despite all the mayhem, vampire bites, and general nastiness, the ending delivers a sweet little love story. There’s something for everyone in The Labyrinth Index. If you like the series, you’ll probably like this entry.

RECOMMENDED

Charles Stross follows the Laundry Files stories with The Labyrinth Index. Our heroine has come under the jurisdiction of the new Prime Minister of England; she is tasked to save and bring back the President of the United States. The powers of evil are in control. Read and be horrified.

Charles Stross – The Labyrinth Index
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Parent Category: Reviews
Published: 15 November 2018

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It's getting quite challenging, bordering on the slightly tedious, to come up with new variants on the biography for writers whose output (and presence on this site via reviews) has reached double figures, as is the case here. And all the fans who read the series (this is book 9, should you choose to read from the beginning. Not that you have to do so...) really don't need to be told, again.
So, this is for those new to the matter, who are reading a review of a book deep into the series – Charles Stross is a Scotland-based writer of SF and Fantasy (classifications can be a bit tricky with his output at times) who has been nominated for about every award going in SF and Fantasy, has won several of them (including Hugos, Locus, and Prometheus), and whose books have been translated into a number of other languages.
The Labyrinth Index is, as said above, the 9th novel in his highly entertaining Laundry Files series – written in a number of different styles and approaches, and plotting an overall story arc by following various protagonists for the duration of a novel.
The basic promise of the series is, as the author neatly lays out on his own site:
"Good news: magic is real.
Bad news: it's a branch of mathematics—prove the right theorems, and entities in other dimensions may hear and, sometimes, do what you tell them to do.
Worse news: this means that magic is best practiced by computer geeks—"applied computational demonologist" is a job description.
Worst news: the extradimensional entities are the horrors that haunted the dreams of H. P. Lovecraft, and the Stars are Coming Right …But don't worry. Her Majesty's Government has a secret agency tasked with defending the realm from the scum of the multiverse. It's nick-named the Laundry by those hapless civil servants and computer geeks who work there [...]”



Besides the ever-growing number of novels in the series which plot the main course towards the end of the world there are also a number of short stories and novellas available, pencilling in other details and side-threads. The series does not need to be read from the beginning – given its length Charlie has provided jumping-on points for readers joining in at a later date. The Labyrinth Index, though, is not one of them.

The story is a direct continuation shortly after the point where The Delirium Brief left off – as a direct consequence of the events in the previous book the UK has a new Prime Minister in Fabian Everyman, also known as the (People's) Mandate. In reality he is a mouthpiece, an avatar, for N'yar lat-Hotep, aka the Black Pharaoh. He was installed in that role by the Laundry, to avoid an (even) bigger evil. And if that's not a turn up for the books then I don't know what is...
“the PM is slippery, even by the standards of other immortal nightmares”
The new government is very much in favour of an exit from the EU, and isolationism. Firstly it will stop the right/wrong people leaving, but more to the point there are ulterior motives, not the least the fact that the Mandate is preparing for war, as he is not the only Elder God awakening.

In the US, meanwhile, have different changes of a similar magnitute taken place – the Black Chamber (affectionately known by Laundry personnel as The Nazgûl) have been taken over by the Sleeper, and have worked a geas to make the populace of the US forget the President and entire Executive Branch exists at all. This in turn leaves a god-sized hole in the national psyche, into which they aim to install the re-awaked Great Cthulhu. Cthulhu is not fully awake yet, and they are working towards a computational solution to the problem of waking and raising him – we are talking a Matryoshka brain and dismantling the inner planets for material...

And so the Mandate sets up an Expeditionary force, under Mhari Murphy (now Baroness Karnstein, for political reasons) to disrupt this plot, put some sand in the gears of the Black Chamber's plans, and generally yank their chain a bit.
There is not terribly much set-up – it's action stations from the go. Preliminaries, inasmuch as required, and other info dumps are told as flash-backs and other inserts to break up the progress towards the showdown.
The pacing and timing of action/progress/information works rather well for me, so no complaint re. this approach!

The book is nominally written as recollections (for posthumous usage) by Mhari, but we see also events happening outside her sphere of control or knowledge. This is not new and was present in earlier books with other protagonists, too, but is quite substantial here. At some point she actually comments on this, and hand-waves her way through the why and how...

Given the gears-within-gears and Secret Agents/Tradecraft setup there is, as befits such a setting, some heavy double crossing and layers of need-to-know and ulterior motives and aims taking place.

I'm not really sure how much of this is really on the main series story arc towards (presumably) the End of the World, and how much is a – frothy and entertaining is sometimes rather bloody (he is still rather rough on his protagonists; we are losing several. Nope, no spoilers!) detour into Secret Agent/Tradecraft Thriller territory.

I felt that there was the odd hand-wave or cheap cop-out to keep the story moving and hanging together; albeit none were jarring enough to spoil my enjoyment.

Overall one of the best-paced and enjoyable instalments in the series in a while, I hope this continues, in which case I'm not in a hurry to see the end of the world!



More Charles Stross

Title: The Labyrinth Index
Author: Charles Stross
Series: Laundry Files
Series Number: 9
Reviewer: Markus
Reviewer URL: http://thierstein.net
Publisher: Tor
Publisher URL: http://www.tor-forge.com
Publication Date: October 2018
Review Date: 181019
Pages: 317
Format: ePub
Topic: Horror
Topic: Thriller

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

As a book reviewer, dealing with ongoing series can be tricky. Leaving aside the fact that you need to have started from the beginning – no mean feat when new books are constantly crossing your desk – you have to find ways to keep your own viewpoint fresh as an overarching narrative unfolds over six, eight, 10 books. So as a rule, I don’t usually wade into those waters.

But every rule has its exceptions. One of mine is Charles Stross and his Laundry Files.

The latest – the ninth in the series – is "The Labyrinth Index." In it, Stross continues his recent trend of allowing secondary characters to assume the heavy lifting duties of the protagonist, leaving series star Bob Howard on the sidelines for this one. This time, it’s Mhari Murphy, a PHANG-infected (DON’T call her a vampire) operative under the New Management of the Laundry.

(Quick Laundry Files primer: Basically, magic exists and is mathematical in nature. Computer science and advances in technology have greatly accelerated mankind’s learning curve, which just means that the many horrifying extradimensional beings hanging out in the universe next door have that many more ways in which to breach the veil and annihilate the world as we know it. The Laundry exists to keep those forces at bay, but they haven’t had much luck as of late.)

Mhari Murphy is a high-level agent working as the head of the British government’s Select Committee on Sanguinary Affairs (i.e. the *wink* not-vampire situation). As one infected with PHANG herself, she understands the issues both practical and moral that come with that particular territory. She serves at the pleasure of Prime Minister Fabian Everyman, known to some as the Mandate and to others as the elder god N’Yar Lat-Hotep; he assumed power thanks to a desperate deal cut by the government to prevent usurpation by something EVEN WORSE during the Lovecraftian Singularity, if you can believe it.

But this new mission is a strange one, even for her. You see, it seems that something odd is going on across the pond in the United States. Apparently, everyone has forgotten about the President. And we’re not just talking about the individual, but the very existence of the office itself. There’s an Executive Branch-shaped hole in the American government – and the Prime Minister is very concerned with who (or what) might be angling to fill that vacuum.

And so Mhari is tasked with assembling a team to head to America. Said team has to be “clean” – unlikely to raise alarms when entering the country – and so the list she’s given by the PM is an interesting one, packed with people we’ve met before on other Laundry-related adventures. Superpowered cop (and Mhari’s lover) Jim, AKA Officer Friendly; tech whiz Brains; vicar-turned-Laundry operative Pete; Dungeon Master Derek with his inexplicable dice; and a blood-mage from another dimension named Yonquil who was captured during the invasion and might be on the spectrum.

With this largely-untrained group, all Mhari is asked to do is determine which part or parts of America’s own paranormal defense arm (known formally the Operational Phenomenology Agency or OPA, informally as the Black Chamber and REALLY informally as the Nazgul) is responsible for erasing the President in an effort to awaken Great Cthulhu. And, if necessary, to kidnap/rescue said President and get him to safety.

For a given value of safety, anyway.

“The Labyrinth Index” is framed as Mhari’s personal journal. Not the formal one she’s expected to keep to help maintain informational continuity should something happen to her, but rather her personal one – the one where she can lay out all of her doubts and fears and thoughts regarding just what the hell she has been thrust into. That first-person perspective has long been a highlight of these books, from the earliest days of bumbling Bob Howard right on through. Frankly, it’s a key part of what makes these stories so engaging – we’re part of the picture, rather than watching from outside.

The scope of the world that Stross has constructed over the course of nine books is impressive in both its detail and its vastness. It’s rare to experience such richly-realized fictional worlds; Stross has a knack for seamlessly bringing together disparate influences and making them work with an energetic harmony.

In truth, I always miss Bob when he’s not present in these books, but Stross has managed to incorporate his new heroes beautifully when it’s their turn to star. Mhari is no exception; we’ve dealt with PHANG-tagonists before, but she’s got a wonderful blend of competence and confusion that sits nicely with the tale being told this time around.

Nine books. That’s a lot. You would think that the conceit would start to wear thin, but instead, it only grows more robust with every installment. And what makes the Laundry Files outshine many of its contemporaries is the simple fact that one gets the impression that there’s an endgame in place. Whether or not that’s actually true remains to be seen, but the work Stross has done certainly SEEMS to point to a defined endpoint. The series doesn’t feel open-ended – a rarity for fantasy/sci-fi series with this kind of length.

“The Labyrinth Index” is a wonderful example of what the Laundry Files has become, a weird and engaging sci-fi/espionage mash-up with a thorough vocabulary of pop culture tropes and a distinct sense of humor about the whole thing. Charles Stross continues to do it up right.

With the aftermath of the previous book firmly in place, Mhari is the main POV and the story uses lots of flashbacks using the personal diary of Mhari instead of her professional one. The main mission in this one is to save the President of the USA. The Sleeper is taking over America and through magic has made people forget the third branch of government. The Black Pharaoh isn’t doing this for kindness but more to negate the power grab of one of his enemies. Mhari puts together a small team to go to the USA and capture him. Several members of the team are past minor characters of previous books so it was nice to see them again. Bob gets one scene in the book and Mo is just name checked. The story was good but for the most part there really isn’t a good guy you are rooting for anymore in the series.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley

The Laundry books started as pastiches of spy thrillers and then went into urban fantasy. In a way The Labyrinth Index has come full circle. It is an out and out spy thriller, albeit one cloaked in the trappings of Stross’s Laundry. Lovecraft-styled fantasy, now rapidly dealing up towards eleven - the series is probably at about six right now - and taking just enough inspiration from recent political movements in the anglo-world before being twisted into non-euclidean angles.

It’s a Mhari book. Mo is mentioned, Bob has a couple of lines in a scene you can just about not realise it is even him. Stross has posited that the Laundry has grown sufficiently that he can take the Pratchett approach. That is, multiple semi-separate series with their own casts that occasionally cross over and plots that reference each other. I can’t recall if Stross has ever expressed the idea, but lately I have wondered if he ever regrets her early characterisations. Yes, it’s all from Bob’s perspective, an at-the-time callow jerk and unreliable, but all the same. She’s considerably more three dimensional now. I really enjoy the non-Bob perspectives and I am glad we now see Bob and Mo from the outside.

I’m less enamoured of the out right adaption of the Nyarlathotep and Cthulhu, but it’s personal taste. I like it Lovecraftian, not “Lovecraft was a weirdo who knew some things that happened to be real”. Although I am amused how Stross - almost certainly - lampshades that his “Real Cthulhu” is inspired by what creeps him out.

If you’ve heard of this book it’s probably because you’ve read all of the preceding books. You should totally read this book. If you haven’t read the earlier books in the series, you should try out The Atrocity Archives first, knowing it was intended as a one-shot, and then read The Jennifer Morgue knowing it is a slight reboot. If you enjoy those two, you will want to read them all.

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.

NOTE: This is a review of the ninth book in a series. It contains no spoilers for the book being reviewed, but may contain spoilers for the books that precede it. Please do not read this review until you have read the other books in the series.

Some acquaintances of mine have commented on my ability to sustain interest in long-running series before they are completed. Trilogies, they say, are easy enough to maintain interest in, especially if the author is good enough about delivering a book once a year or so. Romance novel series are also fairly easy to maintain interest in even if some of them can run into several books long, because each book deals with one specific couple and can therefore be read on its own.

But in genres like sci-fi, fantasy, and urban fantasy, maintaining interest in a series that runs beyond four or five books is, so my acquaintances say, an almost herculean feat of focus - especially if the series has yet to be concluded. For my part, I do not see how that sort of focus is herculean - not least because I often reread books in a series if it has been some time since I engaged with it and need a refresher before diving into the latest volume. It can be a bit tedious to have to do so, especially if the previous novels are doorstoppers in their own right, but doing so does not require any great expenditure of effort, nor is it in any way onerous. There is something pleasant, after all, about revisiting a story one has already engaged with - especially if one enjoyed it.

That is the case with Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series, which I discovered a few years back and have been following ever since. Of course, I was lucky in that when I first encountered it it was already four books deep, which allowed me to really settle into the world and connect with the (at the time) primary protagonist and narrator, Bob Howard. But what really clinched my interest in this series is the way the author uses the novels as a way to comment upon the current social, political, cultural, and economic climate of the world in general and the United Kingdom in particular. Some readers dislike the series for that particular reason, but I think this engagement with the real-world milieu is the series’ highlight.

The Labyrinth Index fits right into that standard set by the other books in the series. Set some time after the momentous events of the previous novel The Delirium Brief, it puts the narrative reins in the hands of Mhari Murphy, Bob Howard’s ex who left the Laundry for the banking world, and then was was transformed into a vampire during the events of The Rhesus Chart. This forced her to return to the Laundry, as the organisation’s point person on all matters vampiric. At the start of The Labyrinth Index she has been given the title Baroness Karnstein, and works directly under the supervision of Fabian Everyman, a.k.a the Black Pharaoh, a.k.a Nyarlathotep: an Elder God who, thanks to a coup staged by the Laundry in order to prevent another Elder God from taking over the government, is now the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. While life under an Elder God is not exactly ideal, it’s certainly better than the alternative: the extinction of all humanity and the destruction of the world.

In the meantime, across the pond in the United States, things are not quite right. It appears that the Americans have forgotten their president - literally. Suspecting that the Black Chamber (the Laundry’s American counterparts and occasional rivals) has been infiltrated by something deadly, Mhari and a small team of select Laundry agents and associates are sent across the Atlantic to find out what has happened - and if possible, fix it. The question is: who - or what - has infiltrated the Black Chamber? And what will it take to break its hold on the citizens of the United States?

Now, for the most part, the Laundry Files books have been set in the United Kingdom, except for two books: this one, and The Fuller Memorandum, which is the third book in the series. The latter is probably my second-favourite in the series (first place goes to The Annihilation Score), mostly because of the way it tackles prosperity theology and the mega-churches that support and promulgate it. This is unsurprising, since as I have mentioned earlier, the author is known for incorporating elements of the real-world milieu into his stories, and using said stories as a way of addressing his own ideas about them.

The Labyrinth Index is no different: it deals with the fallout of events from The Delirium Brief, which in their turn spring from events in The Fuller Memorandum, and deals with the real-world milieu of the American political landscape. And this, right here, is where the author runs into a problem: trying to make an already-absurd reality even more absurd.

I think no one will argue that the political situation around the world is, to put it mildly, a three-ring circus of the first order. The Delirium Brief was published in 2017: a year of turmoil for the United Kingdom, with Brexit the primary cause. Given these events, The Delirium Brief’s central plot - staging a coup to save the government from itself - makes sense. To be sure, making an Elder God Prime Minister might not exactly be the best sort of idea, but sometimes one must choose the lesser evil, and given the current state of the world it can be rather tempting to think that an Elder God might actually be the lesser evil compared to a human politician - or at least, a quantifiable, familiar one.

The Labyrinth Index, for its part, focuses on what’s been going on in the United States while the Laundry wasn’t looking. There were hints of something nefarious afoot in previous novels, but the Laundry wasn’t directly dealing with them - until the events of The Delirium Brief, where side-plots laid the groundwork for what happens in this latest novel. I was excited to find out just what happened in the United States; after all, if the United Kingdom had it bad, then surely the United States was in just as bad a ways, if not worse, no thanks to the Orange Marmot currently ensconced in the White House. I supposed that, given how American politics are absurd just the way they are, the author would find no need to tweak that particular landscape, except to make adjustments to accommodate the world-building.

Except that’s not quite what happens. While the idea of an entire country forgetting its president - especially a country whose president is one of the most powerful people in the world - is an interesting one with the strong makings of a fun story, it’s not what I was expecting. As I have said, the author has a reputation for grounding his work in current issues, and the fact that the circus that is current American politics is not the focus of this novel is rather disappointing. American politics is absurd enough as it is, which makes The Labyrinth Index’s central plot line feel almost inadequate in comparison to that absurdity - as though the author is overextending his reach, in a way, trying to out-absurd the already absurd and falling a bit short.

It also does not help that the narrative is extremely disorganised. Now, to be fair, a loose narrative structure has been a feature of the Laundry Files novels since the first book, and is part of their charm. If the reader cannot make it through The Atrocity Archives because of the way the narrative is organised, then he or she will not make it through the subsequent books either. But while the narrative structure has been tolerable, even entertaining, in previous novels, it is less so in The Labyrinth Index. It creates a sense of “narrative whiplash”: the feeling of being hauled hither and thither by the storyline, unable to focus on and really get into one or two specific things before being forced to turn one’s attention to something else entirely. I am generally tolerant of it, since as I have said it is a feature of the other books in this series, but it doesn’t seem very well-handled in this particular novel.

Apart from the aforementioned issues, however, there are still aspects of this book that readers will find enjoyable - in particular, the characters. I am glad that the author has started writing about the female characters of his series, and was especially pleased with his portrayal of Mo O’Brien in The Annihilation Score. When I found out that The Labyrinth Index would be narrated by Mhari, I was doubly excited because it would be a chance for readers to really get to know her, as opposed to knowing about her from Bob and Mo who are, it must be admitted, not exactly unbiased when it comes to their opinions about her. The Labyrinth Index reveals that, while there is a reason Bob and Mhari did not get along, and why Mo’s reservations about her are somewhat justified, there is more to her than what Bob and Mo have said about her. I would not say that she is a very good person, but she is an interesting character, flawed and broken but - and this is the important bit - capable of overcoming her weaknesses for the greater good (and the survival of herself and those she values, of course). I do not like her as much as I like Mo, but at the very least she is interesting and entirely human.

The plot, too, is going to be of interest to many readers, especially longtime fans of the series. Disorganised narrative aside, the events in this novel solidify some longstanding theories and lay the groundwork for even more. Things are about to get even deadlier, even darker - and the Laundry will be at the forefront of it, for sure.

Overall, The Labyrinth Index is a solid continuation of the Laundry Files series, though it is not without its problems. For one, it tries to out-absurd the already-absurd reality of American politics, and winds up feeling like a bit of a reach for the author. The narrative might also cause problems even for those who are used to the way the Laundry Files tends to play fast and loose with narrative structure; the way it moves quickly from flashback to plot and back again and all around does not make for a very pleasant reading experience. However, the characters and the actual content of the plot make for some very interesting reading. Longtime fans of the Laundry Files are sure to enjoy this latest addition to the series, and will look forward to the next installation.

This review is based on an ARC given to me for free by the publisher via Netgalley. This does not in any way affect my review.

I love the Laundry Files. We always buy for our library. However, I do miss the stories being about Bob and/or Mo. I wasn't happy with his "promotion" to The Eater of Souls. I preferred him to be an IT Techie turned accidental James Bond. Nevertheless, I still devour every book and can't wait for the next one.

The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross, an interesting take on many of the supernatural entities that people write about. Started off pretty good and was an interesting concept. Ultimately ended up not quite being my cup of tea, but I can see how many others would enjoy it more than I would.

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.