Status
Available
Call number
Series
Publication
Tordotcom, Kindle Edition, 384 pages
Description
Bob Howard's career in the Laundry, the secret British government agency dedicated to protecting the world from the supernatural, has involved brilliant hacking, ancient magic, and combat with creatures of pure evil. It has also involved a wearying amount of paperwork and office politics, and his expense reports are still a mess. Now, following the invasion of Yorkshire by the Host of Air and Darkness, the Laundry's existence has become public, and Bob is being trotted out on TV to answer pointed questions about elven asylum seekers. What neither Bob nor his managers have foreseen is that their organization has earned the attention of a horror far more terrifying than any demon: a government looking for public services to privatize. There are things in the Laundry's assets that big business would simply love to get its hands on . . . Inch by inch, Bob Howard and his managers are forced to consider the truly unthinkable: a coup against the British government itself.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
This book confirms the transformation of the Laundry Files from a series of novels into a set of book-length episodes within a multi-volume work. I would not recommend either this latest or the previous book (The Nightmare Stacks) as a point of entry to the series, and as a free-standing novel, I
The inconclusive finish of the previous volume involved the forced disclosure of the super-secret occult intelligence agency nicknamed "The Laundry," as a result of northern England being invaded by an army of elves. The stakes in The Delirium Brief are certainly higher for the Laundry, and perhaps for England as a whole, while incidental remarks throughout the book suggest that in the US and elsewhere in the world, events are spiraling toward global magical catastrophe. I know at least one more book is projected for this series, and it certainly needs it, with precious little closure in this one. But I doubt that the Laundry's world can survive more than two additional installments on the current trajectory.
The sardonic office humor of the earliest Laundry stories has grown in scope, to the point where what were pithy observations about bureaucratic organizational culture have grown into satirical critiques of neoliberalized Western polity. At one point, narrator "Bob Howard" disingenuously says he's "not bitter or anything" about the corrupt privatization of government agencies and functions in general, since "The worst case ... is that parcels don't get delivered, buildings burn down ... Stuff breaks, people die, maybe there's a small nuclear war, boo hoo." This flippancy is by way of stressing the comparative gravity of such corruption impacting the operation of "the Laundry or an equivalent agency" (121).
Bob has some relief in this episode, in that there is some progress in rehabilitating his hexed-and-vexed marriage to fellow Laundry employee Dominique O'Brien. However, the theme of instrumental dehumanization and compromised morals that has dogged all the protagonists throughout the series gets turned up to eleven here, and by the book's end, while the reader may still like the characters, it's no longer clear than any of them especially like themselves.
Despite (and sometimes because of) the grim context, there are many funny moments in The Delirium Brief. The combination of my interested familiarity with the Laundry Files and Stross's zippy contemporary prose made this book read at a breakneck pace. The amazing thing is that it really doesn't introduce any new threats or concepts. It's just working out interactions and consequences from what has come before, and if you've enjoyed the earlier books, this one is necessary.
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expect it would fail. However, as an extension of what has come before, it is extremely effective. It picks up threads left lying in every one of the previous seven volumes and their interstitial novellas, and weaves them into a truly horrifying fabric. To switch metaphors, it is very successful at leveraging the reader's investment in the curious cast of characters that Charles Stross has developed over the course of the series. The inconclusive finish of the previous volume involved the forced disclosure of the super-secret occult intelligence agency nicknamed "The Laundry," as a result of northern England being invaded by an army of elves. The stakes in The Delirium Brief are certainly higher for the Laundry, and perhaps for England as a whole, while incidental remarks throughout the book suggest that in the US and elsewhere in the world, events are spiraling toward global magical catastrophe. I know at least one more book is projected for this series, and it certainly needs it, with precious little closure in this one. But I doubt that the Laundry's world can survive more than two additional installments on the current trajectory.
The sardonic office humor of the earliest Laundry stories has grown in scope, to the point where what were pithy observations about bureaucratic organizational culture have grown into satirical critiques of neoliberalized Western polity. At one point, narrator "Bob Howard" disingenuously says he's "not bitter or anything" about the corrupt privatization of government agencies and functions in general, since "The worst case ... is that parcels don't get delivered, buildings burn down ... Stuff breaks, people die, maybe there's a small nuclear war, boo hoo." This flippancy is by way of stressing the comparative gravity of such corruption impacting the operation of "the Laundry or an equivalent agency" (121).
Bob has some relief in this episode, in that there is some progress in rehabilitating his hexed-and-vexed marriage to fellow Laundry employee Dominique O'Brien. However, the theme of instrumental dehumanization and compromised morals that has dogged all the protagonists throughout the series gets turned up to eleven here, and by the book's end, while the reader may still like the characters, it's no longer clear than any of them especially like themselves.
Despite (and sometimes because of) the grim context, there are many funny moments in The Delirium Brief. The combination of my interested familiarity with the Laundry Files and Stross's zippy contemporary prose made this book read at a breakneck pace. The amazing thing is that it really doesn't introduce any new threats or concepts. It's just working out interactions and consequences from what has come before, and if you've enjoyed the earlier books, this one is necessary.
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LibraryThing member jsburbidge
"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means." - Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
It may be useful to remember, from time to time, that fiction is not defined in terms of the alignment of the moral character of the main actors with the outcome. Tragedy is
The detective story, in its classic form, is purely comic - the story begins with an invasion by chaotic forces in the form of violent crime; it chronicles the restoration of order by the agency of the détective, and ends with the murderer exposed and imprisoned or executed, safely unable to disrupt society further.
In Fryeian Romance, moral character correlates with both centrality and eventual success, and in Fryeian Irony, there tend to be just shades of grey, and stories end with no clear "success".
Modern spy fiction tends towards the ironic from this point of view, from Conrad through Le Carré to Deighton, although a thriller where the protagonist/agent overcomes all opposition and triumphs, so that we leave him (usually, but not always, him) with a drink in one hand and the sovereign's thanks either received or at least deserved, would fit a comic shape. Urban fantasy can sit in various places around the wheel, from a romance model (good Slayer, evil vampires, continuing adventures) through to the ironic, but in common with much popular SF it tends towards the comic, introduced by derivation from the detective story.
Up until now, Stross's Laundry books have had their alliances principally with the comic form, especially that taken by the detective novel. With The Delirium Brief those alliances shift, firmly, into the ironic. There are no good guys left; in many ways it is becoming clear that there never were any in the first place. There are lighter shades of grey and much darker shades of grey, and somewhere over the horizon there are shades which can only be described as light-annihilating (assuming that this volume's villains count as black). Some of the villains from four of the past five novels end up as allies. (Although in one case, the PHANGS, this has been a done deal for a while.)
And after this book there is not even an apparent return to a status quo ante.
It's quite enough to confirm that Peter Watts may have been onto something when he described Charlie as having a bleaker outlook on life than he does.
It is, however, still, in the colloquial sense, sometimes comic: perhaps more funny as the humour becomes blacker. The reader's enhanced view of what is going on supplies a steady flow of dramatic irony in depicting the expectations of the characters.
Charlie's interests have always lain on the spectrum of economic power / governance / policing, not only in the latter part of the Laundry series but also in the Halting State books and the world walker books. (The Laundry starts out as an extension of hacker humour combined with the mild satire of Yes, Minister, and it takes a little while to get more serious.)
Responding to Brexit, which is the nadir of government refusing to govern, pretty much requires that its objective correlative be something like the complete evacuation of the governing figures in favour of something like the Black Pharaoh; a simple critique of slightly stupid authoritarianism of the Cameronian variety, as on display in the last book, was no longer up to the challenge. (When real life news leaders suggest, however jokingly, that the PM is a robot engaged in failing the Turing Test, you know you've passed into unknown territory.)
Very well worth reading, though definitely not an entry point into the series.
It may be useful to remember, from time to time, that fiction is not defined in terms of the alignment of the moral character of the main actors with the outcome. Tragedy is
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not the decline of the good, nor comedy their triumph. They are defined by formal traits - not quite as simple as "the main characters get married" or "the main character dies", much as those can stand in place when watching Shakespeare - and the moral character of the protagonists can vary all the way along the spectrum.The detective story, in its classic form, is purely comic - the story begins with an invasion by chaotic forces in the form of violent crime; it chronicles the restoration of order by the agency of the détective, and ends with the murderer exposed and imprisoned or executed, safely unable to disrupt society further.
In Fryeian Romance, moral character correlates with both centrality and eventual success, and in Fryeian Irony, there tend to be just shades of grey, and stories end with no clear "success".
Modern spy fiction tends towards the ironic from this point of view, from Conrad through Le Carré to Deighton, although a thriller where the protagonist/agent overcomes all opposition and triumphs, so that we leave him (usually, but not always, him) with a drink in one hand and the sovereign's thanks either received or at least deserved, would fit a comic shape. Urban fantasy can sit in various places around the wheel, from a romance model (good Slayer, evil vampires, continuing adventures) through to the ironic, but in common with much popular SF it tends towards the comic, introduced by derivation from the detective story.
Up until now, Stross's Laundry books have had their alliances principally with the comic form, especially that taken by the detective novel. With The Delirium Brief those alliances shift, firmly, into the ironic. There are no good guys left; in many ways it is becoming clear that there never were any in the first place. There are lighter shades of grey and much darker shades of grey, and somewhere over the horizon there are shades which can only be described as light-annihilating (assuming that this volume's villains count as black). Some of the villains from four of the past five novels end up as allies. (Although in one case, the PHANGS, this has been a done deal for a while.)
And after this book there is not even an apparent return to a status quo ante.
It's quite enough to confirm that Peter Watts may have been onto something when he described Charlie as having a bleaker outlook on life than he does.
It is, however, still, in the colloquial sense, sometimes comic: perhaps more funny as the humour becomes blacker. The reader's enhanced view of what is going on supplies a steady flow of dramatic irony in depicting the expectations of the characters.
Charlie's interests have always lain on the spectrum of economic power / governance / policing, not only in the latter part of the Laundry series but also in the Halting State books and the world walker books. (The Laundry starts out as an extension of hacker humour combined with the mild satire of Yes, Minister, and it takes a little while to get more serious.)
Responding to Brexit, which is the nadir of government refusing to govern, pretty much requires that its objective correlative be something like the complete evacuation of the governing figures in favour of something like the Black Pharaoh; a simple critique of slightly stupid authoritarianism of the Cameronian variety, as on display in the last book, was no longer up to the challenge. (When real life news leaders suggest, however jokingly, that the PM is a robot engaged in failing the Turing Test, you know you've passed into unknown territory.)
Very well worth reading, though definitely not an entry point into the series.
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LibraryThing member rivkat
The further adventures of Bob Howard, now the Eater of Souls. The elf incursion has exposed magic to the public, and the natural response of the British government is to blame the agency that used to deal with magic and destroy it with privatization. Unfortunately, the private company they choose
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is a front for the Sleeper in the Temple, which is making a play to take over the country (and fleeing from something even worse than itself in the US). Bureaucratic wrangling and dark magic ensues; this volume definitely ramps up the occult happenings, and gets us a lot closer to the horrible fate that Howard has been talking about since the beginning of the series. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Show Less
LibraryThing member Shrike58
I have very little to add to the first few reviews posted except to note that it's becoming clearer just how desperate the existential threat Stross posited at the start at this series has become and just how desperate the measures the leadership of the Laundry are prepared to embrace when the
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chips are really down and the British government is on the verge of being subverted by just the sort of menace the Stross's paranormal intelligence operation was created to contest. Long-term followers of the series will enjoy the return of Bob Howard and Mo O'Brien to center stage. Actually, I might also note that there is a great deal of sexualized body horror in this installment, even as compared to other entries in the series such as "Equoid" and "The Apocalypse Codex." Show Less
LibraryThing member quondame
Things get really bad when the organization that keeps the demon shit at bay is disbanded as part of a hostile takeover. We are now officially the monsters! But there are worse ones. The dissolution of a protective agency plot is certainly timely in a way that induces true horror.
LibraryThing member d.r.halliwell
Well, the Laundry is struck down by brutal government action, and the main effects felt by the large cast of heroes are a reduction in their paperwork and an improvement in their standard of living. They are sent off on various missions, more or less randomly allocated. And in the end they more or a deus ex machina ending
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less all get back together again for the boss fight which is really Show Less
LibraryThing member Glennis.LeBlanc
And we are back to Bob being the main focus of this story for this one. This might also be the one you want to reread the earlier books because some things from them are coming to light in this one. The world now knows about the Laundry or as the press derisively calls them “The Ministry of
Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
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Magic” because of what happened in the previous book. The book has the Laundry being shut down and privatized and is it greed or something else behind the government’s push for this to happen. I don’t’ want to get into the plot but everything moves quickly in the story and it wraps u up what they are doing but this series really doesn’t give you the happy warm fuzzy endings. This isn’t the book to start reading the series. It is the payoff of reading all the previous books and it isn’t the end of the series but definitely finishing a story arc and starting a new one. Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
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LibraryThing member thegreatape
Easily the best installment in the series so far.
LibraryThing member lavaturtle
At this point the series has really moved beyond the "one-off mission" type format, and is hurtling towards some kind of endgame as our heroes keep leveling up and all the plot threads come crashing together. Schiller's faction is a super-creepy antagonist, although at this point they're less
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right-wing Christian cultists and more weird body horror. It's great to see Mo in action again, and I'm happy with where Bob & Mo's situation landed. Given where this book ended, I'm intrigued to see where things could possibly go next! Show Less
Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — Fantasy Novel — 2018)
Original publication date
2017-07-11