The beginning of this book suggests much more brutality than Stross is willing to do to his characters. Pity, it could have been an excellent book... This way, it's the same Laundry-lemonade as the rest of them. ( )

Great fun. I'm enjoying this series a great deal. ( )

Highly entertaining! I have to admit to the lowly habit of loving snarky humor though... And occasional puns. You be warned... This book of the Laundry series lost points though for some plot goofs near the end. Not serious flaws, but still. Have to play nice with the aspie ( )

The continuing adventures of Bob Howard, IT Specialist and field agent for the British Secret Service section dealing in the occult. This time around there’s some very cultish behaviour for Bb & the gang to deal with and we get to to learn some back-story to a supporting character as well as Mo’s violin. Get the feeling there’s going to be some fallout from this instalment further along in the series. ( )

(Take 2, the internet ate my first review)

This is another solid entry in the Laundry Files and perhaps my favorite yet. We're really starting to get into some of the more horrific corners of the world. In particular, we learn a bit more about Mo's violin; we get another glimpse into a far flung world (the Sleeper in the Pyramid, guarded by a wall of the dead on spikes; great/terrible visual; especially when one imagines RAF patrols keeping an eye on eit); and more about Angleton than I bet Bob ever wanted to know (and I really is explored more in the next books).

On the down side, Bob and Mo continue to have to do some fairly terrible things. There's some fallout from that in this book, but I feel like they just sort of skate by it without really dealing with what's going on. That's either going to come up in a later book or it's going to continue to get weirder when it doesn't.

The writing still pulls you along kicking and screaming. From the halfway point on, and in particular the ending, I couldn't put it down. There are more odd first/third person switches (Bob speaks in first person, everyone else is third person) and in particular a few chapters where I assume the intention is to hide exactly who is speaking. All together, it requires a bit more mental bandwidth to read than the previous two, but it's still worth it.

Looking forward, there are still two novels with Bob as the main character. There are a few things that I really want to see. Fingers crossed. ( )