Quantum of Nightmares

Laundry Files, Book 11

By: Charles Stross

Narrated by: Gideon Emery

Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

It's a brave new Britain under the New Management. The avuncular prime minister is an ancient eldritch god of unimaginable power. Crime is plummeting as almost every offense is punishable by death. And everywhere you look, there are people with strange powers, some of which they can control, and some, not so much.

Hyper organized and formidable, Eve Starkey defeated her boss, the louche magical adept and billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge, in a supernatural duel to the death. Now she's in charge of the Bigge Corporation - just in time to discover the lethal trap Rupert set for her long ago.

Wendy Deere's transhuman abilities have gotten her through many a scrape. Now she's gainfully employed investigating unauthorized supernatural shenanigans. She swore to herself she wouldn't again get entangled with Eve Starkey's bohemian brother, Imp, and his crew of transhuman misfits. Yeah, right.

Mary Macandless has powers of her own. Right now she's pretending to be a nanny in order to kidnap the children of a pair of famous government-authorized superheroes. These children have powers of their own, and Mary Macandless is in way over her head.

Amanda Sullivan is the HR manager of a minor grocery chain, much oppressed by her glossy blonde boss - who is cooking up an appalling, extralegal scheme literally involving human flesh.

All of these stories will come together, with world-bending results....

©2022 Charles Stross (P)2022 Recorded Books

always entertaining

Not my favorite of the series but I love the tongue-in-cheek and irreverent humor and excellent turns of phrase.

good fun

after Dead Lied Dreaming I was not looking forward to another book with this cast of characters. however, the problems with dld (being bloated with descriptions of the contents of rooms, and characters that are indistinguishable until halfway through the book for example) are all resolved in this novel. action, good mystery, and some magical fun reappear in this book. there are a lot of characters to keep up with, but most of them are very enjoyable.

Back to form!

Quite entertaining! Great characters built on from previous book and now a great story and lots of fun too.

the new management is up to speed

the 2nd book of the new series has come into it's own! the series had a bit of a slow start but I have to say this is a wonderful read. the pacing is superb on par with the fuller memorandum. definitely renewed my interest even without Bob or Pinky around. give it a try please!

A winding narrative with a payoff at the end

I enjoyed this entry in the series, same cast as the previous book (not Bob, the other ones) with a few new characters. Several seemingly independent narratives that all connect at the end.

Slice of life anime comes to the Laundry universe

I'm on chapter 6 and I can't figure out if anything has happened yet. Game Boy is a flat and boring character that feels like he was stitched together from nerd references and twitter posts. Mary is just one long Mary Poppins joke and it isn't funny, and the kids are just there to create narrative noise to give her something to do. Eve just hangs around being rich and disliking her husband. Trying to read this book feels like flipping channels on daytime TV while doomscrolling the worst parts of twitter. I am a huge fan of Charlie Stross and love almost everything he's written but something is off the last few novels and it's getting worse. I hate saying this considering how absolutely fantastic his early work is, but I think he needs a long holiday somewhere entirely new and a total break from twitter and reddit in order to recharge his creative tanks.

Not even Laundry Files anymore

I slogged through the previous book in the series because I loved the Bob Howard LF books. Once the New Management took over, the whole thing became a lot less interesting. It's no longer the mythos-meets-tech hijinks that drew me into the series at the start. And the newer characters just don't have anything going on that I care to read about. I couldn't finish the book, and I regret having already bought the next one.

Not up to the usual standard

The "New Management" books feature overly complicated plot lines that don't come together until the very end. Also they are listed as part of the Laundry Files world but it seems like you could put them into some other franchise and not lose all that much. All they have in common with the Laundry Files is a few passing references. I generally pre-order these books but I'm not sure that will be the case after this one. The performance salvages this purchase and goes a long way to making it worth the money. I'm looking forward to Escape From Yokai Land but after that I'm hoping that the series continues to refocus on Bob Howard.

The worst bits of the Laundry.

Can't stand Gameboy and the others, and that's most of the book. I know he won't go back to Gov. stuff z but that isn't enough for me. It just isn't enough to keep me interested at this point. Love your stuff, Charles z but it just isn't what I want as much anymore.

If you love the Atrocity Archives but

Are committed to missing 2 books in the series. Replete with the same characters you cared nothing about in the previous chapter.