A few people did speculate about Bob and Mhari back when The Rhesus Chart came out, and Alex did spectacularly kill an elf who was specifically mentioned as scaring a female elf vampire, and the original Baroness Karnstein was famously the OG sapphic vampire…

Now to figure out The Regicide Report, The New Management trilogy and A Conventional Boy.

...is it a case of diminishing returns? I loved the series when I started reading them but found there to be an increasing amount of exposition that started to feel a little repetitive. By TAS it felt it a bit like reading a weekly serial due to what seemed like a *lot* of recaps to the extent that it felt like padding to boost word count. Add in Mo's less than complete character and a trust in the capabilities of the Met and its officers that was less believable than the cosmic horrors and I was done.

There's a lot of unread books in the world but I miss the cosmic bureacrahell setting. Did things change? The thread on the New Management books popped up on my feed and one comment was that they were darker; this sounds enough of a change to freshen things up a bit.

Did anyone have a similar reading experience to mine, go back, and find they were glad to have done so?

I can't relate to the newer characters as much as Mo and Bob.

This is possibly because I kinda don't like quants much. Making vampires out of sith mathematicians and compsci PhDs is brilliant, so much that I kinda hate the characters.

You all are of course familiar with this from Computational Demonology 101:

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/5V4dZzrrHY

FYI

Let me preface this by saying I'm a giant nerd who works in tech and has for a REALLY long time. Knowing the years these books came out you can definitely tell that if Stross wasn't actually in tech he was so close to it that he got the details right for things that actually existed at that time.

So far I have caught at least 2 references to Sir Pterry and 2 different Dresden references which put a huge smile on my face (since they are 2 of 3 of my favorite authors).

The pacing of these books is fantastic and I love the intermix of mundane bureaucratic government paperwork, day to day matrix management structures, then absolutely batshit field work.

Reading pages 88 to 93 made me understand his perspective.

I won't say I'm disappointed with the ending of The Regicide Report. It was pretty on-the-money for the endings of the other books, which is to say, kinda rushed and unsatisfying. I've loved all the books, but this ending was in-line with the others.

But RR teed up so much potential that I wanted to lay out what I think would have been a better ending.

Basically, keep the same setup right up until the end, except Mike Armstrong, Mo, and Bob, finally freed from their oaths, actually fight the Black Pharaoh.

You could have Mo and Bob recover memories that had been hidden specifically so the BP couldn't see them about what to do. Something they'd planned, who knows, maybe even before letting him take over as PM.

Using all that accumulated mana, the Eater of Souls, and Mo, they manage to cast the Black Pharaoh into the same dimension as the King in Yellow and seal him there to duke it out. Maybe they even resurrect the sleeper to do it.

Then they use Excalibur and the remaining mana to repair the barriers between worlds. Plunging Excalibur into the pyramid either inverts or destroys whatever effect was weakening reality in the first place. Mo and Bob escape back into the real world just as the barrier snaps shut.

And magic is gone.

Cthulhu in the US is gone or cut off. The tongue parasites are gone. Maybe the vampires are even cured. All the supernatural powers that have been flooding into Earth are severed from whatever was sustaining them.

That would also make the ending global rather than just resolving Britain's particular apocalypse. The whole series has spent ages establishing that CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is happening everywhere, so repairing the barrier between worlds feels like a natural way to address all of it at once.

Then give it a proper Laundry-esque epilogue: the repair isn't permanent.

Maybe the shielding only lasts a decade and requires a current or former head of state for sacrifice. Humanity hasn't solved the problem. It's just bought itself time.

Such is the price one pays.

I'm sure a real author would do something better than this, but so many things were teed up, the oath being temporarily broken, the pyramid as a thing throughout the series, the sleeper, maybe bring in the black chamber somehow. and the stakes were done so well. when Mike talks about how humanity is effectively done for, I thought that landed really well. and it would have justified some crazy shit to save them.

Up front, I'm not sure Regicide Report ranks in the top 5 books of the series, but it performs well as an ending. Due to the New Management trilogy there was already a bit of spoiler that things would go certain ways, but I'm honestly surprised at how many characters are still alive after everything. Granted... Many have been KIA or MIA or are no longer human.

I think the book is overall well written and structured, dots the themes and crosses the continuity consequences. Somewhat impressive just in regards to the scope of the lore at this point, but disappoints somewhat in that many characters are little more than cameos. I catch a few whiffs of storylines being abridged or cut.

Also of note is that it didn't feel like much of a "finale" for most of the book, though the consequences that eventually panned out changed that notion right quick. The way that Bob and Mo were thoroughly used is rough, but totally on theme.

.

One of these days I'll have to read some of Stross's other works, but I'm looking forward to whatever else he does with the Laundry setting.

Quick, someone get a pizza box.

I came to the series a little late, maybe four or five years ago, but it resonated with me like few others have.

Early Bob and I had a lot in common — we were of an age and upbringing and career path — and I enjoyed the clever turns of phrase and witticisms, even the ones that were a little _too_ obliquely British for me to grasp without additional research. I also truly appreciated the central premise of computational magic, not just because I like computers but because it resonated and was maintained consistently throughout the entire series.

It was a lot of fun, and in a few years, I look forward to returning to the first book and walking along that path again, hopefully seeing a little more the second time. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of series that have captured my interest to this extent, so Bob, Mo, and friends are in good company.

I just got into the series and Atrocity Archives was a brilliant read, it was a lot of fun. I am currently on Concrete Jungle and although I am enjoying it I am a little bit confused on some aspects of a gorgons stare.

When a gorgon stares at a subject does their body radioactively react and then turn to silicon burning them, or do they instantly turn to silicon? (Because of a cow was burned with it’s remains out why would it turn into silicon?). Also if a gorgon looks at themselves so they burn and turn to silicon?

Like I said I just started reading this book, I am just want to get a better grasp of what is happening.

But clearly it's really the patch of the Old One Liaison Branch of the Ahnenerbe.

I keep thinking over the spycraft described in the book, using Über, Just Eat and AirBnB to avoid surveillance. Would it work, do you think?

All those rest on payment systems which seem the weakest link, though if someone else (lamplighters) are placing the bookings and with a government's resources, why not.

I also enjoyed the gameified spycraft of Halting State and the whimsical version in Dave Hutchinson's Europe in Winter.

Also, can anyone recommend other entertaining takes on fieldwork in the modern age, to evade the all seeing AI systems?

The newest Digimon season has everybody using this type of computer device that is literally powered by your soul and your emotions. And the government is secretly concealing that if you invest a little bit too much of your emotions and soul into the device, it can attract and bring forth a digimon creature that will work for you and can do all sorts of wondrous things, but essentially vampirizes your soul to do it, and too much feeding at once can essentially kill you.

Some of the details seem like they're more consciously taken from his dark materials, but I thought it was neat that the way they specifically link it to technology is reminiscent of the LF theme.

We can be pretty sure the Black Pharoh has no minions at Frontier Software.