The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files, #4)

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The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files #4)

by Charles Stross (Goodreads Author)

4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 · rating details · 1,741 ratings · 220 reviews

In the world of the Laundry, there is One True Religion — and we know how to deal with cultists when we find them. When a prominent televangelist with connections to 10 Downing Street shows disturbing signs of being able to work miracles, it’s only natural for the Laundry, the secret service for dealing with occult threats, to take an interest. But there’s a fly in the oin...more

Kindle Edition, 336 pages

Published July 3rd 2012 by Ace (first published 2012)

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Mar 08, 2013 Carly rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantastic-elements, fantasy, horror, humor, urban-fantasy, muf

After his last job as the tethered goat for a bunch of insane apocalypse-desiring cultists, Bob Howard, computational demonologist, is hoping for a little rest and relaxation so that he can try to shake his recent partial transformation into a demonic Eater of Souls. When he finally returns to work at The Laundry, the top-secret ministry of magic, he thinks his wish has been granted--after all, how hard can his new leadership and resource management position be?

Soon, he is embroiled in yet anoth...more After his last job as the tethered goat for a bunch of insane apocalypse-desiring cultists, Bob Howard, computational demonologist, is hoping for a little rest and relaxation so that he can try to shake his recent partial transformation into a demonic Eater of Souls. When he finally returns to work at The Laundry, the top-secret ministry of magic, he thinks his wish has been granted--after all, how hard can his new leadership and resource management position be?

Soon, he is embroiled in yet another cultist conspiracy: an American televangelist seems to be channelling a little too much Lovecraft in his sermons, so Bob is sent out to America to manage an off-the-books investigative team. He must battle with religious zealots, creepy creatures that crawl into brains and zombify their hosts, the terrifyingly harsh American equivalent to the Laundry, and (worst of all) rather a lot of bureaucracy. Can Bob make it through, save his assets, prevent the waking of a Lovecraftian sleeper, and, most difficult of all, can he keep all of his paperwork straight?

Somehow, this book fell a little flat for me. It's still a fun mixture of comedy and horror--but it's precisely the same mixture that I encountered in the last three books. I'm not sure why, but the series failed to make the transition from absurdist comedy to something with more depth. For me to really get sucked into a story, I have to genuinely care about the characters and feel anxiety for them; otherwise, the constant danger and disaster and damage just becomes something of a drag. I like Bob, I really do, but I don't think I particularly care about him, and the same holds true for most of the secondary characters. This general detachment was exacerbated in this book by the way that everyone around Bob kept harping on and on about how special and unique and intelligent he is. At one point, one character comments that one of his special talents is being underestimated. That talent must work overtime on me, because four books in, I still don't see what he's done to gain such respect and such a reputation as a rule-breaker. In the first book, he's a tech nerd with a few clever thoughts, in the second and third, he plays the Damsel in Distress, and in all the books, he sticks straight to the script that the Laundry gives him. Don't get me wrong; I found all that hilarious, but it means that the only indication of Bob's special talents comes from all the people around him telling him how brilliant he is. For me, part of the attraction of the stories was that Bob is a normal bloke, a tech nerd, who, despite being no one special, is forced into absurdly dangerous situations. I spent a large portion of the book musing on this, and what I see as unearned adulation tends to decrease whatever empathy I have for Bob.

I loved the portrayal of the incredibly evil American magical black ops--they get called the Nazgul!-- and the so-called American dialogue (I got the giggles every time Stross's "American" characters "shall," "shan't," or "shat"). As an ex-protestant/evangelical-Christian and current agnostic, I also somewhat enjoyed the portrayal of the frothing-at-the-mouth-crazy evangelists. However, I'd estimate a good 40% of the book is simply there to trash evangelical Christians, and it's not nice, rueful, kindly humour--it's got a nasty, mocking, vitriolic, hate-filled edge to it. My patience was repeatedly tried by multiple smug comments that characterized all evangelicals and even all Christians as obtuse, credulous idiots. I've always been a little mixed about the horror elements in these books--I don't like it when incidental characters die, and these books tend towards huge redshirt/zombie fodder ensembles. In this book, the horror and death elements significantly overshot my threshold. One reason for this may be the scant sympathy that Bob and Stross appeared to give the most of the hapless Christian sacrifices. The books also involve a lot less nerd/Lovecraftian humour and a lot more pop-culture stuff, which is a pro if you're not a computer scientist, but for me meant that a lot more jokes went whistling over my head, missing my comprehension zone by a mile.

Overall, Apocalypse Codex is a fun continuation to the series, but because I didn't feel that it significantly increased the depth, it fell a little flat for me. If you're looking for a little light Lovecraftian horror and won't get caught up in the death toll, take a look.

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Aug 16, 2012 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars

Stross continues to churn out nerd flavored popcorn, but its beginning to taste a bit stale. When a work becomes this long, it either has to grow or become stagnant. So far the work isn’t maturing.

On the good side, Stross does for the most part manage to actually give this story an exciting and not anticlimactic ending. And Stross’s RPG sensibilities, and the intersection of information technology, secret services, with Cthulhu Mythos continues to charm on a basic level. I just wish the stories...more Stross continues to churn out nerd flavored popcorn, but its beginning to taste a bit stale. When a work becomes this long, it either has to grow or become stagnant. So far the work isn’t maturing.

On the good side, Stross does for the most part manage to actually give this story an exciting and not anticlimactic ending. And Stross’s RPG sensibilities, and the intersection of information technology, secret services, with Cthulhu Mythos continues to charm on a basic level. I just wish the stories still felt like they belonged in the Cthulhu Mythos. Stross is bordering on committing travesties on par with Brian Lumley attempting to insert benevolent deities in to the canon, though obviously this would be far from Stross’s own instincts.

In this adventure, our fearless IT professional/computational demonologist/Her Majesty's Secret Servant is once again involved in trying to stop a plot organized by the mind of the thing slumbering in the Black Pyramid on the Leng Plateau. This time the mind has hijacked a darkly comical band of evangelicals from America, who in the name of the false Christ proceed to act out various nightmare scenarios on the poor benighted populace of Colorado. Once again we have all sorts of geek name dropping, so that with a little research you could probably figure out the specific articles and blogs Stross has been reading over the last year. But all that techno-babble – even if it is real world technobabble – more and more feels like dull exposition that we really should have been over with by now. Even more so, the story is departing further and further from its Delta Green roots, and with it from its Lovecraftian roots. The story is becoming noticeably less dark and less like a horror story, and more and more like a comic book or superhero caper with a bit of non-comic book code approved violence and adult themes. Stross is mainstreaming his story, but in the process he’s losing the numinous horror that makes a Lovecraftian story work.

One of the rules of a Lovecraftian story is that the human mind simply can’t handle the universe. The more knowledge you gain, the less stable you become. Humanity has no choice but sheltering in helpless ignorance. Lovecraftian heroes are doomed. They may save the world, but always at the cost of themselves. Bob however is increasingly sane and resilient. Faced with cosmic horrors beyond imagination, Bob is unflinching and increasingly treats his horrorshow world as normal, relatable, and even controllable. The unknowable fear becomes known. Ultimately, the high point of the series was way back in the Atrocity archives, with the young Bob running like heck to escape from a monster that threatens to eat the entire universe. The human villain of the Apocalypse Codex by contrast is a laughable sad trope TV Evangelist with a Guy Smiley grin, who never quite manages to get past chewing up the scenery and for me never got passed the really bad image on the cover.

Far from being a horror story, the novels are beginning to boil down to geek wish fulfillment. There is a lot of having your cake and eating it going on here. It’s not enough to impose your will on the cyberspace universe, wouldn’t it be great if you could hack and program the real world too? Bob is devotedly married to a hot loving wife, but he keeps being forced – forced mind you – into these situations where he has to be intimate with some hot geek spy. She even had to full tongue kiss him, entirely for his own good and against his will naturally. There is lip service given to doom and gloom about the future, but not the real existential fear of it. Bob is not even faced with as much doom and gloom as your average civil service zombie, or corporate code monkey in a cubical farm for crying out loud. Nothing threatens to overturn or undermine Bob’s basic belief systems. There are no hard choices. His hands can stay clean of the blood of innocents – and even for the most part enemies - even in the middle of a potential megadeath event with the existence of humanity on the line and everyone out to kill him while working for an agency run by Lovecraftian sorcerers. There is no life of meaningless drudgery. Life has a purpose – even if it is only fighting back the alien horrors from the dungeon dimensions (that now even get to have some dialogue). In villains, it is increasingly less Nyarthalotep and more Dr. Doom. The sidekicks have more to do with Modesty Blaise than Robert Olmstead or Henry Armitage. Bob has to deal with the fact that he sorta kinda has to give up his atheism, but not in any way that causes him real pain or difficulty. Rather, Bob gets to give up the religion he doesn’t want in an exchange for a life filled with meaning and purpose that he does want.

It’s all so far from the weighty consciousness burning all consuming horror that is found in the originals. Everyone gets their action hero shining moments of awesome, including now our affable put upon IT nerd. Indeed, it’s hard not to believe that the writer is having so much fun that he is deliberately taking steps to distance himself from all of that horror stuff. The only problem with all of that is that it makes the series far less original and far from introspective. Where Lovecraft was channeling everything from his fear of miscegenation to a phobia of fish, Stross is channeling what? Fear of Americans and organized religion? You think he could do better than that. Bertrand Russell channels Lovecraft most potently when writes, “Brief and powerless is Man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way.” Now that is someone channeling the fear of mankind in the face of the faceless Azathoth. Stross is more and more just channeling his geek cred.
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Jul 27, 2012 Will rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Poor Bob. He just keeps getting in the shit.

This book's a little rushed, and there are some segments which it would have been impossible for Bob to know about from his perspective. The new characters are flat (Persephone Hazard isn't so much Tara Chase as Catwoman) and the introduction ("Sketchy Preacher comes to Downing Street") turns out to have very little to do with the main plot. And Moe barely gets an appearance, which is a pity.

Which is the major failing of this book; there's no Laundry....more

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Apr 12, 2013 Leticia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: urban-fantasy

TL;DR: good book, better if you are not american, know enough urban fantasy and/or write.

When I read a book in a series, it's inevitable that'll mentally compare it to the others. That is not a good habit, since different books are entirely different animals, and a series usually has an overall arch, some sort of looming future. Or, in case of the Laundry Files, a dooming future.

As the Laundry Files series walk to their ending, things start getting pretty grim for Bob Howard. And dark. And on mu...more

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Mar 27, 2013 Tim Hicks rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, fantasy

First. DON'T read this if you haven't read the previous Laundry books.

Second. Whether or not you liked Stross's Merchant Princes series, approach this one separately. It's quite different.

This is a good continuation of a good series, and sets a good base for moving the series forward in future books, rather than just turning the crank again.

U.S. readers may find the book a little bit too British. As an England-born Canadian, I rather liked it.

In this book, we continue to learn more about Angl...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Alan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: True believers in false gods

Recommended to Alan by: Previous wet work

Oh, sure, I make a lot of noise about not liking series, and then as soon as I see the next book in Charlie Stross' Laundry Files, here I am doing the happy dance as I pick it off the shelf. But... Stross is a very different writer, and this is a very different sort of series.

Bob Howard works for the Laundry—the very secret British secret service dedicated to protecting the realm against threats that are more alien than mere foreign agents, using techniques more arcane than playing baccarat or d...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Torie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is really 3.5 stars.

I did enjoy the book. As always, the Laundry books are funny and readable adventures. But this one takes a real turn for the dark and depressing. Bob struggles with PTSD. Case Nightmare Green is real and on the horizon. And something sinister is brewing in America...

I actually don't mind the darker turn, though I admit I miss the Dilbert politics and bureaucracy. And there's nothing wrong with Bob or Mo or any of our favorites, they are the same as ever. And the directio...more This is really 3.5 stars.

I did enjoy the book. As always, the Laundry books are funny and readable adventures. But this one takes a real turn for the dark and depressing. Bob struggles with PTSD. Case Nightmare Green is real and on the horizon. And something sinister is brewing in America...

I actually don't mind the darker turn, though I admit I miss the Dilbert politics and bureaucracy. And there's nothing wrong with Bob or Mo or any of our favorites, they are the same as ever. And the direction the series is taking narratively is compelling to me.

So what's the issue?

One, Bob just isn't in most of this book. he spends a great deal of time stuck in a hotel room. He does get to be awesome towards the end, but it's 200 pages of either him getting frustrated in a Starbucks or seeing through someone else's point of view. And without Bob, there's no emotional core, and there's actually very little Laundry at all. The story takes place very removed from the people and things that have grown on me over the years.

Two, I just don't like the other POV characters. Persephone isn't a character, she's Catwoman. She's much too magical/special and much too powerful, and her vulnerabilities feel very artificial to me. Mostly she's just not very interesting. She doesn't feel authentic to me, so I get bored with her, even though most of the story unfolds through her eyes. Johnny is worse--even flatter, even less interesting. These aren't people, they're cliches, and I am still very surprised that Stross relied on them to carry this arc.

Three, the departure into American evangelicalism just doesn't fit the vibe of the other books for me. Magic has mutated from sufficiently advanced mathematics to just plain old magic, that some people can do because they're basically wizards. Meh. I can get that in other books. And it's a look at a culture written from a very outside perspective. It's not wrong, it just doesn't have that "THIS RINGS SO TRUE!" feeling you get when he writes about IT and bureaucracy and management, the things that really get you in the other books because they feel ridiculously authentic even when we're talking about Lovecraftian horror.

So did I like it? Yes. Am I look forward to more? Sure. Did this book surprise, impress, or delight me? No.(less)

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Aug 30, 2012 Jeffrey Grant rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like Stross' Laundry universe, but I'm not sure I really like the Bob. Or rather, I don't like what Stross keeps doing to him; he gets thrown into situations with insufficient or misleading knowledge, everything goes "tits up" as the author and main character might say, and then he pulls himself out of it to the amazement of the organization with Anderson in the back going "I told you so".
It's still entertaining and the banter of the characters is great, but the formulaic approach is starting...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Jacqie rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's got to be hard to write a series. One of the things I liked most about Atrocity Archives was that it was a fresh spin on the genre that I couldn't believe that no one had written before. Four books in, I've got a good feel for the world, but the surprise of the first book isn't there.

This time, we end up in Colorado Springs in the evangelical church from Hell- literally. I ended up liking the Duchess and Johnnie, two new characters who give the Laundry plausible deniability about this cland...more

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Aug 11, 2012 Burgoo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

By now you should know what to expect from a Laundry novel. Bob gets called in to investigate a strange situation, it all goes horribly awry, & he finds himself outnumbered and outgunned. And the fate of the world is on the line.

This time around, Bob goes to America to look into an “Evangelical” minister. One of those guys with a megachurch & whathaveyou. He’s there in a supervisory context, on loan to the Externals department (yeah, Bob hadn’t heard of those guys either). As you can pro...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Wayne rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am going to echo another review I read of the Laundry series as a whole, in that the arc is getting darker and less quirky as it goes. The snide humor is still there, but in sparing amounts. What is there, in this novel especially, is a dark sense of foreboding doom. There was also a twisted theme of Christianity gone awry which was a mix of Mythos with existing religion which was both original and uncomfortable. I think that was Stross' intent, as it made the impending danger all the more per...more

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Jul 29, 2012 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf

The Apocalypse Codex is the fourth of the Laundry Files series from Charles Stross. It certainly doesn't bear reading without first having read the rest of the series. Briefly: the Laundry is the secret British government agency tasked with preventing demonic incursions to Earth. Bob Howard started life as an IT guy, conscripted because he accidentally discovered algorithms that had potency outside the computer. He's developed into a fairly good computational necromancer and field agent for the...more

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Jul 19, 2012 Robin Edman rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a series book, and it really does call for knowledge of the predecessor books to make sense. On the other hand, the last of the predecessor books had such an epic climax that it seemed time to retire poor old Bob, because he can't be the loveable dork that carried all these stories having survived something so huge. So this new story felt a little weird because Bob was trying to dork around but the reader knows the whole time that he has some major mojo going on. To that extent, knowledg...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Bob Howard goes forth.

This series has turned a corner and become more serious, with this volume. Or the author has decided to take it more seriously. I don't mean it's stopped being funny; it's still Bob's irate-nerd edge-of-over-clever voice narrating, and that still turns the pages nicely. Nor do I refer to the escalation of the story arc, which is indeed escalating (The Stars Are Right, more or less now, as of this volume).

No, I mean that the early volumes were *gonzo* horror, starting with N...more Bob Howard goes forth.

This series has turned a corner and become more serious, with this volume. Or the author has decided to take it more seriously. I don't mean it's stopped being funny; it's still Bob's irate-nerd edge-of-over-clever voice narrating, and that still turns the pages nicely. Nor do I refer to the escalation of the story arc, which is indeed escalating (The Stars Are Right, more or less now, as of this volume).

No, I mean that the early volumes were *gonzo* horror, starting with Nazis From Space, more or less literally. The set pieces were genuinely spooky, but shallowly so; monsters and mind-invading demons from beyond space and time.

This time, the on-stage threat is an American televangelist. There are of course monsters and mind-invading demons lurking behind the plot curtains -- but the televangelist and his thoroughly-human brand of evil grounds the story, in a way that I don't think previous volumes managed. We start to see what occult threats mean to civilians, to *us*; not as a hypothetical future catastrophe, not as cinematic heroes-vs-goons bloodbath, but in lives ruined and destroyed.

(Well, I should say, as that *and* the looming planetary catastrophe *and* the cinematic fight scenes. Each at appropriate times in the story.)

Also: the author has some words for American fundamentalism. He's not saying that the real-life Christian megachurches want to summon Cthulhu and destroy civilization... but Lovecraftian horror is big on religous cults, and Stross isn't shy about pointing out how close some *popular* religious movements are to cult-land. The repressive, controlling, (...sexist, anti-intellectual, power-hungry, self-righteous...) elements of the religious right are the explicit villain here. The monsters, to some degree, are just reification.

(Just last month I was reading -- thank you, Fred Clark -- about the five points of Calvinist theology. But it had *not* occurred to me that if you start with a classic Lovecraftian cult story, all over people going hopelessly insane and corrupt bloodlines coming out to overwhelm them... well, those five points wouldn't seem even a little bit out of place, would they? No, they wouldn't. Thank you, Charlie.)

I don't want to give the impression that this is a Message Book. It's the same thriller ride it's always been, with plots and horrors and spies and stuff. I'm saying that the tone-tension used to be between cosmic horror and petty bureaucracy. But the petty bureaucracy is slowly revealing itself as the high-stakes game-playing of serious espionage; the tension is now between cosmic horror and real-life horror. I don't know if Stross intended this curveball from the beginning (I doubt it, really); but I like it.
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Jul 12, 2012 Karlo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror, own

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 11, 2012 Tjic rated it 1 of 5 stars

Charlie Stross was one of my favorite science fiction authors a while back - Iron Sunrise, the first few books in the Laundry Files universe, and more.

I'm not sure if his style is changing or if my preferences are, but recently I've been less and less able to tolerate his writing. It strikes me as smug, self-righteous, and very VERY pleased with itself. The less clever he's actually being, the more self-regard his fiction seems to exude.

I'd pre-ordered this book months ago, and it arrived yester...more

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C. 1. I know they address each other as "Father" and "Daughter," but that character is in fact his personal assistant (his "current number one handmaiden...more
Aug 06, 2012 02:58am

Matt I am the target of Stross apparantly deep seated phobias, and its not the gleeful goring of Christianity that bothers me - I get that sort of thing al...more
Aug 16, 2012 08:01pm

Maddi Sojourner C.M. I thought the minister was not so much "disguised" as one but either compromised or subverted via the rather custom Bible he uses. Tjic if you ha...more
Jan 02, 2013 12:58am

Jul 05, 2012 John Carter McKnight rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another good Laundry novel, better in some ways than its predecessor, in others a bit flatter. The core drawback is, to write good satire or good horror, you have to write from inside the system. Stross was spot-on with bureaucratic IT departments and the Lovecraft and Bond mythos. Here he takes on American evangelism, and it falls a bit flat: Stross' knowledge isn't nearly as immediate, and at core, he clearly lacks the visceral reaction that makes for first rate comedy or horror: the British-a...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Michael Burnam-fink rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, sci-fi

On the good side, more Laundry Files! On the downside, more Laundry Files. Bob Howard is back, and this time he's facing off against American Evangelists/Cthulhu Cultists who have very serious plans towards the End Times. But unlike the previous Laundry books, which took used Stross's deep knowledge of various arcana (bureaucratic IT, 20th century occultism, James Bond movies) to add depth to the high concept premise of the series, The Apocalypse Codex is just kinda... generic. It's not at all b...more

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Nov 27, 2012 Ramón Pérez rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

Estoy seguro de que Stross no es capaz de hacerlo todo bien, y que hay algo que se le da mal. El tipo es muy listo y, simplemente lo evita.

Este cuarto volumen de la serie de La Lavandería (The Laundry Files) es una más que digna continuación de los anteriores, dejando el listón mucho más que alto. Stross une el terror de H.P. Lovecraft, el humor británico más negro y el género de espionaje mejor conseguido y crea algo que funciona sin fisuras, suspende tu incredulidad y te lleva a lugares horren...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Ade Couper rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is good.

For those of you not familiar with Charles Stross' "Laundry" novels , the laundry in question is the branch of the civil service that deals with eldritch horrors from another dimension....the lead , Bob Fuller , is a civil servant , & , as he reluctantly admits , a secret agent , but the world he works in is much more Len Deighton than Ian Fleming......"Harry Palmer & the Deathly Hallows" perhaps...?

This time Bob is in the field with 2 "contractors" - Persephone hazard (a wh...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Tim Niland rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-reads

The Laundry is a super-secret branch of the British government in Charles Stross’s fictional universe that is given the task of keeping extra-dimensional horrors from being brought into our universe. Bob Howard, a mild mannered civil servant, was drafted into The Laundry after inadvertently making magic with a computer algorithm. In this adventure Bob is on loan to the External Assets division and charged with overseeing two contract employees, The Duchess and Johnny McTavish, as they attempt to...more

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Sep 15, 2012 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'd give this book 3.5 stars, based on the premise and the characters. Unfortunately, the main character seems to fall flat in this one, at least as compared to previous books in the Laundry series, and Stross was only able to partially redeem the story by incorporating other characters. It was interesting to me that he brought in a new female lead, rather than using an existing character, but not quite enough to commend the book as anything other than a "light summer popcorn read," to borrow a...more

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Jul 28, 2012 Rob Wickings rated it 3 of 5 stars

Charlie Stross' Laundry books can be something of a curate's egg. If you're a fan of the Len Deighton/John Le Carre school of espionage thrillers, mixed up with a heavy dose of Lovecraftian horrors scratching at the veil between the worlds and hard-core SF geekery, then you're in for a treat. If not, you'll find the books bewildering if not outright irritating.

The basic conceit goes like this: Bob Howard works for a government department tasked with defence of the realm against threats from bey...more

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Sep 27, 2012 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

More Bob? Yes please! Filled with loads of geeky references that had me grinning as I read them, the Laundry series is one in which I get really excited about a new book. And this one pays off. Continuing right off the back of the last novel (like another series I like, the Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry, Bob is having a right bad year.. Of course the implication in this series is that things are only going to get worse as the world steady heads toward Code Nightmare Green, which is basic...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Kathy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've continued to enjoy Stross's Laundry series as Bob Howard, computational demonaloigist finds himself learning more of the Laundry's dirty secrets with each book. Bob has been changed after the events in The Fuller Memorandumand his new boss has decided to give him a field "stress test" by putting him in charge of two "external assets".

I have to say I didn't enjoy this book quite as much as the previous books in the series because a large section of the book moves away from the first person...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Michael David Cobb rated it 3 of 5 stars

I've already decided to like Bob Howard, and I get the cleverness of mocking up some evangelicals with a scarier God than any of them suspect, but this particular drama was a great deal more earthbound and yes, less mindbendingly frightening. I keep imagining Bob Howard being played in a movie by Simon Pegg and then the whole matter seems settled.

The book seemed to cover a lot of ground, background that is, with this or that describing what happened to Bob in the prior books. Too many times, I...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Jose Solis rated it 4 of 5 stars

La mas reciente entrada en la serie The Laundry. Una fantástica mezcla de novela de espías, thriller tecnológico y horror lovecraftiano. No decepcionará a los fans de la serie, aunque me pareció un poco corta en comparación de las anteriores. Y mantiene bastante continuidad con las novelas previas. Creo que sí es necesario leerlas en orden: The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, The Fuller Memorandum.

Nuestro protagonista, Bob Howard, se enfrenta a nuevos retos. Por un lado, su promoción a g...more

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Jul 15, 2012 Martin Sutherland rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 14, 2012 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

I do not think this is the best book thus far in the series. (You should not start the laundry series midstream; if you're going to read it read from the beginning.) But I so enjoy this as a good summer popcorn read I had to give it four stars. Meet Bob Howard, a civil servant in the Laundry, a supersecret British intelligence agency. Bob is a cross between Dilbert and George Smiley (albeit with a more faithful wife and with more Bond-esque escapades). The series is a smashup of spy thriller and...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Nancy Oakes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cosmic-horror, lovecraftian-horror, sci-fi-fantasy

"Bob Howard may be humanity's last hope. Start praying..."

Still recovering from the hair-raising events of The Fuller Memorandum, Bob now finds himself on the Fast Stream track for promotion, and his superiors have decided that he needs to attend some Professional Development training with regular civil servants who don't work for the Laundry. Bob of course, doesn't want to go -- he'd rather audit some courses at the Dunwich facility that would improve his prospects for survival for "when the te...more "Bob Howard may be humanity's last hope. Start praying..."

Still recovering from the hair-raising events of The Fuller Memorandum, Bob now finds himself on the Fast Stream track for promotion, and his superiors have decided that he needs to attend some Professional Development training with regular civil servants who don't work for the Laundry. Bob of course, doesn't want to go -- he'd rather audit some courses at the Dunwich facility that would improve his prospects for survival for "when the tentacles hit the pentacle." But of course, he has no choice, and after the first "four hours of soul-destroyingly banal tedium," meets Gerald Lockhart, who is in charge of external assets. Lockhart wants Bob to join forces with Persephone Hazard, code name BASHFUL INCENDIARY, who has been hired to investigate why an American televangelist has all of a sudden taken an intense interest in the people surrounding the Prime Minister. The Laundry is not allowed to snoop on Number 10, but the activities of the televangelist, Ray Schiller, have whetted the organization's curiosity. It's off to America for Bob, where he follows BASHFUL INCENDIARY to a retreat in the Rockies, where she will be poised to discover exactly what Schiller and his disciples are getting up to -- and it's definitely not pretty.

According to Howard's own blog, he wrote The Apocalypse Codex with Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise in mind. But you'll also find a lot of Lovecraft, as well as some "Wrath of Khan" moments as Bob tries to prevent a group of evil and somewhat misguided members of the Golden Promise Ministries from ushering in the Second Coming that could launch NIGHTMARE CASE GREEN before its time. That would be very, very bad indeed.

In The Apocalypse Codex Stross has created a plot that starts out like a light tap on the gas pedal and then accelerates in increments to some stomach-tensing action as you wonder how the heck they're going to make out of this one before the apocalypse erupts. Although a great deal of the action is told from the perspectives of two of the other characters, it fits together well considering this story is coming from Bob Howard's memoirs. It also seems like the Laundry series is getting a bit more serious now as events are moving toward the inevitable fight between humanity and what's laying in wait inside the edges and angles of other universes, but I hope it doesn't ever lose its sense of humor and geekness that these books are noted for and that is part of the reason I love this series. It's another excellent and fun installment of the Laundry series, but don't read this if you're a very religious Christian unless you have a sense of humor. It's obvious that Howard has issues with fundamentalist Christians in the way he throws those pointed barbs around -- the arrows don't bother me, but some people might take his humor the wrong way. If you can get past that, you'll be rewarded with a fun adventure that takes you deeper into the heart of the strange and mysterious Laundry. (less)

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About Charles Stross

Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy.

Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams and Richard Morgan.

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Quotes from The Apocalypse Codex

“Let’s see.’ She fiddles with her terminal and the room card reader. ‘You’re in 403 and 404. Have a nice day.'
I hand Persephone the Forbidden Room card and keep Room Not Found for myself. She looks at me oddly.” — 2 people liked it

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The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files #4)

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