The Nightmare Stacks

[Leewei]

This was a decent book, but I must admit that I really am starting to miss Bob Howard. According to Stross, he'll be back in center stage in the next book, due out in 2017.

The protagonist in this novel, Alex Schwartz, is something of an analog for Howard. The Laundry, and society at large, has been suffering a lot more from clashes with and incursions by the supernatural.

The book deviated from the typical formula of a Laundry novel toward the end.

Specifically, it started into a play by play of a number of skirmishes by the UK armed forces and the would-be elven conquerors.

So what are your thoughts about this book? Did you like it? What will the aftermath be? How close did the bad guys actually get to winning?

[Arcane_Secrets]

This was a decent book, but I must admit that I really am starting to miss Bob Howard. According to Stross, he'll be back in center stage in the next book, due out in 2017.

The protagonist in this novel, Alex Schwartz, is something of an analog for Howard. The Laundry, and society at large, has been suffering a lot more from clashes with and incursions by the supernatural.

The book deviated from the typical formula of a Laundry novel toward the end.

Specifically, it started into a play by play of a number of skirmishes by the UK armed forces and the would-be elven conquerors.

So what are your thoughts about this book? Did you like it? What will the aftermath be? How close did the bad guys actually get to winning?

I liked it a lot, but the issue of the aftermath is kind of...complicated.

One thing that the book very much so showed is that a lot of the things that the Laundry had depended on either didn't work, or the things that they considered SOP might no longer be valid in the future. Scorpion Stare seemed largely counterproductive, and in a sense it was their secrecy, that they had no such thing as a large civil defense procedure (although of course that creates its own problems because now more people are thinking about those types of issues, which has other implications I'll discuss later), that increased civilian casualties.

In a very real sense Alex was only able to do what he did precisely because the normal geases didn't entirely work against him. If he couldn't straddle the balance between being a Laundry agent and telling Cassie enough of the truth that she could consider allying with him against the rest of the elves then even though her stepmother stupidly attempted to assassinate her and she already was capable of mercy, she might've held off which would've prolonged the battles.

I don't think they had any real chance of winning but they could've done a lot more damage. The only way I think they could've come close to taking over (and even then, only in the UK) is if they had tried to meld modern tech with their abilities already and, say, tried to transmit their killing glamours or control geases over emergency frequencies (taking out the military/first responders quickly) but this would've required their co-opting someone who knew enough about how the modern world worked to think of this.

The problems they have going forward from what happened now are that:

They now have at least a sizable group that everyone knows tried to massacre/conquer humanity, even though they surrendered and their two most powerful leaders are dead. It'll be an ongoing problem for them to be put anywhere.

The fact that this is beyond covering up will encourage others to try and might spawn something similar to an arms race.

[GloatingSwine]

What will the aftermath be?

Not what it was going to be. (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/08/reality-is-broken-1.html#more)

But yeah, Bob is going to be back in the protagonist's chair in The Delirium Brief, and his timing couldn't be worse with the Laundry, and the existence of everything it exists to keep secret, suddenly very very public.

[Leewei]

Not what it was going to be. (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/08/reality-is-broken-1.html#more)

God damn you, Brexit!

[Hopeless]

God damn you, Brexit!

On behalf of Brexiteers everywhere you are very, very welcome!:smallamused:

And any chance that minister for magic has a very bad end considering who he's apparently based on?

Karma anyone?

[GloatingSwine]

Oh very possibly.

But that's a brief light in a very very dark night as far as the Laundry's interactions with government are concerned

(It's really quite hard to talk about who's likely to be what without going over the No Politics rule though).

[The Glyphstone]

Reality Is Unrealistic, I guess.

[Leewei]

On behalf of Brexiteers everywhere you are very, very welcome!:smallamused:

And any chance that minister for magic has a very bad end considering who he's apparently based on?

Karma anyone?

Stross certainly has made his opinion clear. So far, though, his bad fates for politicians haven't been particularly fatal. Those who lose simply fall from power while civilians and those fighting in the trenches do the bleeding.

This part of the novel was heartbreaking. It ended up working, albeit with enormous civilian casualties. The question in my mind is whether the casualties would have been worse without it. The fae invaders had already killed over a thousand civilians, and were killing everyone they met literally on sight.

Given the climate they created by coming in guns blazing, it's safe to say that the fae will have almost no friends in government, or even in The Laundry itself.

[GloatingSwine]

Stross certainly has made his opinion clear. So far, though, his bad fates for politicians haven't been particularly fatal. Those who lose simply fall from power while civilians and those fighting in the trenches do the bleeding.


Pob hasn't really been in the books much either, so a great downfall for him is probably unlikely to arise.

[Khedrac]

I liked the novel, and tbh, Bob is getting to the point where it is hard to write about him as he is getting a bit powerful without some much worse problems arising.

As for the problems with Scorpion Stare, it actually suffered from a classic problem with the set-up: GIGO on the algorithm development.In that when they recognition software was being 'trained' they were continually telling it that it had a false positive when the software was correct. That is one way to guarantee that the recognition algorithms will have real problems.

I did have one personal disappointment with the book - and that was down to Charles Stross' research.
For past books CS has attempted to make them current at date of publication, but he complained that too many UK government organisations got renamed etc. between the final draft and publication. So I understand CS stated that he was giving up on that and would make them current at time of final draft.

So, the book refers to Andover where CS locates both the UK Army HQ and the DLO (Defence Logisitics Organisation). Sorry, but given all his previous care that's a really silly mistake.
Ignoring the description of Andover of "picturesque" (I don't agree, but then I live there) he is correct placing the HQ of the Army there (well just outside). The problem is the DLO:
1. The DLO merged with the Defence Procurement Agency to form Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) in 2007.
2. DE&S moved it's HQ from Andover to Bristol in 2010 (so that the Army HQ could take over the site).
In the past CS has been worried by department name changes that he missed by a month of 3, here he missed it by 9 years...

On the other hand, this does give us a latest point for the divergence from "real world" history.

[Leewei]

In addition to all the other trouble The Laundry has at the moment, they now have a group of elves with both magical knowledge and military grade fantastic weapons. The Black Chamber and many other groups may well have an interest in them, as might BLUE HADES (the elves are certainly not signatories to the pact between the Deep Ones and the humans.)