My thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for an advance copy of a prequel to a long running series, that highlights the life and times of an important member, one whose life was changed rolling dice, a skill that he would later use to save the world.

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons about a year before a movie featuring Tom Hanks playing a role player came out, and shocked a nation. In the movie Tom Hanks was made so crazed by his role playing lifestyle that he hung out in a steam tunnel and threw himself off a building. At least this is how I remember it, I watched the movie once, thought the story was stupid, and the character had bigger problems than thinking he was a half elf fighter/magic user, or whatever. This movie though, came at a time when Satan was corrupting the morals of children all over America, with albums playing Satan's words of suicide solution backwards, demonic day cares and more. Satanic Panic made a few of my friends lay down the dice, and even got us a strong talking to by our priest, who a year later left the priesthood and got married. Anyway my parents thought it was dumb, and let me play. When my Aunt complained to her, my Mom said, "He and his friends have fun, use their imaginations and even better use math. Please tell me what is wrong with that." It turns out my Mom was wrong, at least in the world the Laundry Files takes place. Role playing games involve math, which can open up portals, portals that anything can enter into. And only a fugitive dungeon master might be able to save the day. A Conventional Boy: A Laundry Files Novel by Charles Stross, is the thirteenth book in this popular series, and acts as a prologue, while investigating the past of one of their more popular characters.

Derek Reilly was a young man in 1984, with a few friends that all shared an interest in Role playing games. This interest caught the attention of a teacher, who feared for their souls, and so made a call. Derek and his friends were imprisoned by a secret government group that investigates and protects from occult shenanigans, and the attacks from elder gods. All of which can be aided in this world in role playing games. Derek was soon found to be innocent of nothing but a great imagination, however Derek was deemed to now know too much, and hence could never be let out. Derek was sent to Camp Sunshine the Guantanamo for cultists, sacrificers, and other people of occult interest. And basically forgotten. In that time Derek has found a way to share role playing adventures by mail, and when a convention comes close to his camp, Derek takes a chace and skips out. However what he finds at the convention is a lot more than he expected even after 30 years, and he is going to have to roll a saving throws to get out of this mess.

This is the first book that I have read by Charles Stross and I really am annoyed that it took me this long to catch up on this series. Not only a fun adventure, not only a coll flashback to the days I spent flinging dice and making up scenarios to kill my friends, but some really great writing. Stross knows his stuff, and more importantly can write what it is like to play an adventure and capture the feeling, and leave the reader wanting more. The world is interesting and I want to know more. The characters were all new to me, but I had no problem following along, nor figuring out what was going on, or how things worked. This is more of a novella, but it does have two other stories, featuring the main protagonist, Bob Howard, and a few words from the author about the story and where it might be going. A whole lot of fun, both humorous, a little sad, and with characters one really cares about.

A good place to jump on. I had no idea what the world was about, but I enjoyed it and really want to know more. For fans of occult stories, alternate universe tales, and role playing games. And people who like stories that are fun.

When Derek Reilly was a teenager, back in the 80s, no one understood Dungeons and Dragons. The Laundry, a British super-secret organization developed to defend England against incursions from other dimensions, was afraid D&D would result in monsters being allowed into our space and time. Derek got swept up in the anti-D&D mentality and ended up spending his life at Camp Sunshine. Thoroughly institutionalized, Derek works in the office, filing and filling out forms, but maintains an ongoing D&D correspondence with several people outside the institution. When he discovers a D&D convention will be taking place nearby, he manufactures credentials and goes walkabout. It takes two days for Camp Sunshine to figure out he is missing. It takes less than that for Derek to figure out one of the companies participating in the convention is actually trying to conjure a minor god and bring it into this dimension. Mayhem results but The Laundry will prevail. I really enjoy this series with its sly British humor and mind-blowing ideas.

What happens when a boy who was playing the wrong game at the wrong time during the Satanic Panic of the 80's ends up in magic jail, manages to continue gaming play-by-post for thirty years, stages a jailbreak after that thirty years passes to attend a gaming convention, and is accidentally in just the right position with just the right education in occultism from being in magic jail for thirty years to see that the new game being promoted at the convention is actually really occult and really scary and evil?

If you would like to know the answer to that question, read this book!

Poor Derek was just trying to run a D&D game for a couple of friends when some paranoid parents reported his doings to the wrong people (the Laundry). The Laundry, with its mission to keep amateur sorcerers from going pro on their own and maybe accidentally triggering an occult manifestation that could end the world, got a bit overzealous and dragged 14 year old Derek and his buddies off to a secure place that not everyone gets to come back from. Eventually Derek's friends were let go but Derek himself fell through some bureaucratic cracks which were not made better by the desire of the Laundry to avoid embarrassment, and before he knew it, he was a lifer in the holding system for dangerous magicians despite never having cast a spell in his life (except in D&D).

Derek sort of accepted his lot and made the best of a bad situation until motive means and opportunity came along in a perfect storm for him to be able to skedaddle and attend a gaming convention and maybe even play in person with the folks he'd been running a play by post game for from jail.

As a long-term gamer myself who also started during the Satanic Panic and whose parents thought I was endangering my soul, I could feel for poor Derek. He's just a basically nice guy who happens to have learned some really scary stuff from decades of being locked up with a bunch of dangerous wizards. Charles Stross was also around and a part of the very early parts of the advent of D&D and you can see his love of the game in this book. There's a lot of nostalgia, many Easter eggs, and that was a lot of fun.

I didn't rate the book higher because it's basically about the fantasy of "what if you turned into your DND character and had to survive an adventure somehow" and I think that the author was trying to avoid being too much indebted to D&D particulars. It's a difficult needle to thread. How do you engage readers who have never played and entertain them while also getting buy-in from those who know very,very well what you are talking about? In the end, the grind of the adventure felt like it got short-changed because of the necessity to do a lot of lead-up and exposition. I still had fun! It just didn't entirely scratch that very specific itch I have for the "drop into a D&D world" scenario.

The imaginative twist of using D&D dice to battle a looming evil in a LARP game is both inventive and thrilling. With its clever blend of speculative fiction and satire, this story delivers a compelling, fast-paced ride that keeps you guessing. If you’re into sci-fi with a sharp edge and a touch of geeky nostalgia, this book is a must-read.