The Labyrinth Index is the latest in Charles Stross’s spy-Lovecraftian Laundry Files series, and I’m looking forward to perusing it. There’s just something relaxing in reading a well-written horror novel by an excellent author who is profoundly terrified of things that merely, at worst, make me roll my eyes a bit. No, really: you still get the frisson, but not the actual horror itself. Which is good, because God knows there’s enough real things in the world to be scared about…
4 thoughts on “In the Mail: The Labyrinth Index.”
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Interestingly, Amazon says this one will have Mhari Murphy in the protagonist role.
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I wonder if that’ll go any better than ‘Annihilation Score’.
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At this point, I’m still chewing through the stack of Jim Butcher and will decide whether to give Stross another run at the wallet .. eventually.
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Mew
Never tried Stross, what’s he like?
Uneven, unfortunately. His worst in the series, imo, is the fourth book. And I hated that one. On the other hand, I thought the book immediately before it was excellent. His progressive politics sometimes comes through, though in more mild of a fashion than many other authors. And sometimes it’s hard to say whether something is due to his politics, or just due to the odd changes in the world that we live in. For instance, the family scene in the elf book can be seen as mocking the “normals”. But it can also be seen as mocking the not so normals via the clueless outsider comments about things that society tells us we have to take for granted (to explain it better would spoil the scene). As another example, the later books introduce an Anglican priest who becomes concerned when he realizes that some members of his congregation still believe in the Devil. And that seems like poking fun at those kooky Christians… unless you know that the priest’s view really does match up the belief of quite a few real world Anglican priests.
The last book I read was the elf book. I think he’s released at least one since then.
Thanks for the info.