Charlie Stross Rocks

I’ve just finished reading “The Jennifer Morgue“, the second of Charles Stross‘s Laundry series (the first is the “The Atrocity Archive” and there is a third and a few more short stories as well). It is a fantastic read, I really didn’t want to put it down, even though family life wouldn’t let me read it all in one sitting.

Avoiding spoilers the two books are both very readable and set in a sort of modern day techno-magic spy thriller piss take. The premise is that magic is just applied mathematics and there is a very low budget Government cover up, the British civil service meets Delta Green. Having been an official computer geek in the British civil service I can relate to some of this very well, which makes the humour very close to home, in a Dilbertesque sort of way. Other parts of the writing remind me of some of the earlier Pratchett works where he was parodying the fantasy genre. The Jennifer Morgue is an extended James Bond parody/homage as part of the plot. Very cleverly done. It also has a fair nod towards geek culture and the world of computer gaming.

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