![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blufive[Golden Gryphon, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk]
Bob Howard works for The Laundry. They're just like any other bureaucratic government agency, except that you need to sign the third section of the Official Secrets Act (in blood) before you're even allowed to know it exists.
Magic is just a branch of mathematics, which has advanced a great deal since they invented the electric, and later laser, pentagram. The problem nowadays is that any over-enthusiastic computer geek exploring fractal mathematics with a powerful desktop computer can re-landscape a county, or unleash the Great Old Ones. Which is exactly the sort of thing The Laundry works to prevent.
This book actually consists of two tales: The Atrocity Archive, a short novel originally serialized in the magazine Spectrum SF; and The Concrete Jungle, a previously unpublished sequel.
In his dedication, the author salutes H.P. Lovecraft, Len Deighton and Neal Stephenson. Those names alone ought to conjure up the sort of stuff we're talking about here. A spy thriller, where the worst case scenario is armageddon-by-cthuloid-horror, told with a droll, dry, prose style reminiscent of Snow Crash-era Stephenson.
Utterly bonkers, in the best possible way. It had me totally gripped, and I sniggered at several points, which is rare enough in itself. Huge fun.
Bob Howard works for The Laundry. They're just like any other bureaucratic government agency, except that you need to sign the third section of the Official Secrets Act (in blood) before you're even allowed to know it exists.
Magic is just a branch of mathematics, which has advanced a great deal since they invented the electric, and later laser, pentagram. The problem nowadays is that any over-enthusiastic computer geek exploring fractal mathematics with a powerful desktop computer can re-landscape a county, or unleash the Great Old Ones. Which is exactly the sort of thing The Laundry works to prevent.
This book actually consists of two tales: The Atrocity Archive, a short novel originally serialized in the magazine Spectrum SF; and The Concrete Jungle, a previously unpublished sequel.
In his dedication, the author salutes H.P. Lovecraft, Len Deighton and Neal Stephenson. Those names alone ought to conjure up the sort of stuff we're talking about here. A spy thriller, where the worst case scenario is armageddon-by-cthuloid-horror, told with a droll, dry, prose style reminiscent of Snow Crash-era Stephenson.
Utterly bonkers, in the best possible way. It had me totally gripped, and I sniggered at several points, which is rare enough in itself. Huge fun.