Published by ‎ Tordotcom on January 11, 2022

The latest Laundry Files novel departs from the usual theme of metahuman intelligence officers saving England from demonic threats. The three interwoven plot threads involve a nanny who has been tasked with kidnapping the four bratty kids of parents who are attending a summit for state-licensed superheroes, a sorceress who discovers that she inherited her boss’ cult after she made her boss disappear, and a supermarket that saves labor costs by animating employees made from meat.

The nanny is Mary MacCandless, who does not appreciate being mistaken for Mary Poppins. Mary’s purse holds far more than it should, including a variety of weapons, but the four kids have powers of their own (one controls plants, another brings toys to life) and are more than a match for Mary. It seems you can’t take metahuman children anywhere, at least if you don’t want the place you visit to be destroyed.

The sorceress is Eve, the executive assistant of Rupert de Montfort Bigge. Eve discovers after making Rupert disappear that she is the heir to his financial empire. Rupert owns an island in the Channel Islands, where he was leading a cult that gains power through human sacrifice. By using an email service from the afterlife, Rupert has instructed his acolytes to sacrifice four metahuman kids. The kids, of course, are Mary’s kidnap victims, although she didn’t realize when she took the job that human sacrifice was on the table. To her credit, that knowledge gives Mary some moral qualms. It’s one thing to kidnap but a much different thing to disembowel.

Eve’s brother Imp has the ability to push people toward decisions that Imp wants them to make. He leads a gang of metahuman criminals, although they spend most of their time playing video games. Eve invites Imp to the island, where they discover the sinister details of Rupert’s cult. Eve also discovers Rupert’s plan to buy a store called Flavrsmart, where a butcher has just been fired for having sex with an effigy he assembled from meat. He’s good at his job, but there are some work rule violations that HR just can’t overlook.

Much of the plot revolves around Flavrsmart’s participation in a “compulsory remedial work placement scheme for persistently non-entrepreneurial dependents — ‘useless eaters’ as the Prime Minister calls them.” The employees are given a mask to wear that projects a computer-generated face and interacts with customers, leaving the employees with nothing to do but stand and walk. The store is taking the government’s concept to a higher level by replacing living employees with dead ones — or just sacks of meat that have shaped into human form (“meat puppets”).

As always, Charles Stross pokes fun at Thatcherism and the conservative tendency toward authoritarianism. Still, Quantum of Nightmares is less political than some Laundry Files novels. It’s also funnier than most. While there is always a degree of playfulness in Laundry Files stories, some take supernatural threats to the planet more seriously than others. Stross added superheroes to the Laundry Files universe several years ago. Their appearance typically signals a lighter approach to his storytelling. This one takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to its over-the-top material.

My favorite Laundry Files novels feature Bob Howard. Most of those novels accept the absurdities of the Laundry Files universe at face value and work as well-told action/adventure stories. Quantum of Nightmares is nevertheless so carefully plotted, so goofily gruesome, and so filled with amusing characters that I have to recommend it. The novel is so far outside the mainstream for the series that readers should be able to understand and enjoy it as a standalone, even if they haven’t read any previous Laundry Files novel.

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This is a Charles Stross novel on... whatever drugs you take that make you talk at, like, three times the normal speed. (Hmm. Is it speed?)

One blurb says this is a Laundry Files novel. Another says that it is Laundry Files-adjacent... and that's the accurate one. I haven't read every Laundry Files, but I've read enough that I know what's going on. The start of this novel, though, was unrecognisable... so then I went to look it up, and it's the sequel (not mentioned in the blurbs I saw) to a spin-off. So... that's all important information to have on hand. (There is no Bob Howard in this novel.) Having said that, I did read the whole thing and I did largely enjoy it, so Stross manages to get enough background info in without dry info-dumps to make it understandable... eventually.

CW: there's some pretty gross stuff here. Think... meat packaging... and really the very worst bits about what can go wrong in abattoirs. Also, and I'm only slightly joking, if you have a phobia about HR and their policies, this is not the book for you; it takes corporate speak and the ill-intentions of large corporations to a whole new level. I suspect this does count as horror, in which case it's right on the giddy edge for me.

There are many different strands entwined throughout this story. There's a pseudo-nanny looking after kids who are not what they seem (well, they're annoying little kids but with Extras); there's loafers who just want to play D&D who get pulled into annoying real world stuff; there's the aforementioned HR and a truly heinous view of cut-price supermarkets and a nightmarish future for how they might turn a profit. There are desperate people and sad people and bewildered people; there are double-crosses and worshipping of sinister entities and ruthless acts that just made me blink at their atrociousness. It's not a particularly happy book; nor is it uplifting; so if that's what you need right now, go somewhere else. But there is a dark humour to parts, and there's a diverse cast of characters (trans, queer, not-Anglo), and the occasional good deed, so it's entirely and unrelentingly depressing.

... when I put it like that I'm not sure how I managed to get through it! It's not quite as bad as that makes it sound. For one thing, it rockets along at a tremendous pace. I never quite got lost but it was occasionally a white-knuckle, hold-on-tight and trust that Stross is in control of the narrative kind of experience. I probably only kept going because I do, indeed, trust Stross to land such intricate stories in a way that makes sense. Which he does here, yet again.

I don't think I'll go find the first book now - I suspect much of it is now spoiled, because I know who survives various difficult situations. Also, if it's like this one, I need a fair while to balance out the grimness. But I don't regret reading this one.