Stross writes sci-fi horror. At least, that's what the collection known as The Laundry Files novels are. And I love them.

The phrase "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" appears once or twice in his books, and seems to sum up his writing style. Bob, the main character in The Laundry Files, works in IT, has access to a pair of geniuses called Pinky and Brains (and if you don't get that reference you're too young, so go read something else), carries around an iPho More...

Have you ever seen the xkcd comic about regular expressions? (If you don't read xkcd, you probably won't enjoy this book, so I'd advise skipping this review.)

Basically, the plot of The Fuller Memorandum is this comic strip, but in novel form and with an invasion of Lovecraftian beasties.

I'm not sure if this book is a 5, or just a 5 by comparison--I've somehow hit a batch of not particularly fun reads lately. In either case, I recommend this read iff (if and only if) you fulfil the following prec More...

[MINOR SPOILERS]

In his Laundry Files series, Charles Stross has fun sending raw lumps of genre trope through his own literary Fun Factory. What extrudes out the other end is a tentacular tangle of homage comprising the pulpy horror of Lovecraft, the world-weary existentialism of the Cold War British espionage novel, and the cynicism and techie in-jokes of Simon Travaglia's "Bastard Operator From Hell" stories.


The Laundry Files detail the exploits of one Bob Howard, network sysadmin, field operat More...

So the Laundry series continues. You'll need to read The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue to really understand all the backstory in this book, which features an unobtrusive civil servant who incidentally exorcises demons as part of his job description. Also, in this book, there seems to be more momentum gathering for a related series of books, as opposed to two almost stand-alone novels. Villains who get away, a superior with an interesting inner life, possible long-term plots threads.

T More...

You will want to have read the first two Laundry novels—The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue—before picking up this third excursion into the eldritch horror of higher mathematics and computational conjuring. And I do mean that you will want to have read them, and in order; not only do those earlier works contain essential background, they're also cracking good yarns, and the world of the Laundry is one of the all-around neatest conceits I've ever run across.

Charles Stross hits all the r More...

When it comes to protecting humanity from "gibbering monstrosities from beyond space-time," Bob Howard is your man. Mild mannered civil servant, Howard works for The Laundry, a super secret branch of the British government tasked with protecting England from extra-terrestrial entities. Things are going along swimmingly for Bob until a run of the mill exorcism in an RAF museum goes wrong and results in the accidental death of a civilian. Worse yet, Bob's mysterious boss Angleton and a super secre More...

I'm currently in the great position of having a pile of Stross books that I've yet to read from Christmas, and I started with The Fuller Memorandum because it's the most recent of the Laundry novels. I started reading his work with The Atrocity Archives several years back, and the Laundry is one of the core keywords/settings I associate Charles Stross with in my head.

Firstly, to say it simplest, I think the Laundry books are great fun, and haven't run into a Stross book yet I haven't enjoyed. Th More...

It's not like I would ever badmouth Charlie Stross, after all against all expectations he seems to be a friend of mine on GoodReads, but it's hard to explain just how much I love the 'Laundry' series.

As a reader, perhaps more slowly recently, I have read many hundreds of books. I long ago stopped keeping count after devouring dozens to achieve a reading proficiency award as a young child. Sometimes I sympathise with the hero (or more likely, the anti-hero) and to a certain extent I might even id More...

Evidently, I read books 1 and 2 in the Laundry Files, and I remember enjoying them, but either this was some time ago, or my memory is rapidly deteriorating. I remember liking the irreverent humor, but I always felt as though I were missing something, some crucial bit of geekdom that would allow me to *get* the books.

Then I read Lovecraft (well, not all of Lovecraft, but a pretty sizeable chunk), and when I cracked open The Fuller Memorandum, it was a real "Aha!" moment. Entities from Lovecraft' More...

I've enjoyed Charles Stross's previous entries in The Laundry Files quite a bit - The Atrocity Archives was a great dive into this weird world, and The Jennifer Morgue was a solid follow-up, but I was skeptical that a third entry would continue the quality level, especially after the all's-well-that-ends-well ending of The Jennifer Morgue.

Unfortunately, it turns out that my suspicions were warranted. While we do get some entertaining dribs and drabs here and there with Bob trying to make the bes More...

Another excellent book in the Laundry series, the story behind The Fuller Memorandum is related via Bob Howard's memoir of some pretty harrowing events, all in the line of duty. Two years prior to the events of this book, his boss Angleton had suggested to Bob that he write his memoirs. When Bob wonders why a 30 year-old should even start thinking about an autobiography, he discovers that it's in the book of rules that officers above a certain rank keep a classified journal or update their memoi More...

Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! This is the third novel in Stross' "Laundry Files" set of stories, and it's by far the best to date. This whole series has been a joy to read, mostly because the protagonist, Bob Howard, is a geek. And in the "Laundry" universe, it's geeks who have come to understand computational demonology, alternate dimensions, and magic. Which means that *I* relate to him far more than I relate to any muscle-bound, sword-swinging barbarian (or any other stereotypical fantasy hero i More...

Bob Howard's not having a good time of it. A routine exorcism goes wrong; cultists are running around London, attacking him and his wife; his boss has disappeared; and he's been seconded on to yet another committee. But at least he's got a decent manager at the moment (following the demise of his last one).

The third Laundry novel is much darker than its predecessors, with CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN starting to come to the fore, and much nastier scenes, including cannibalism and child sacrifice. It's a More...

Soy muy fan de esta serie The Laundry desde que leí The Concrete Jungle.

La mezcla de novela de espías y terror Lovecraftiano (entre otras cosas) es excelente. El protagonista es un empleado civil llamado Bob Howard quien trabaja para la organización del gobierno británico ultrasecreta The Laundry. Dicha organización se encarga de proteger el reino (y al mundo de pasadita) de amenazas de tipo sobrenatural: cultos secretos, necromantes, zombies, nazis satánicos, etc... pero muy especialmente de el More...

The third novel in Stross' Laundry series, The Fuller Memorandum continues the adventures of computer geek Bob Howard working for the eponymous Laundry, a shadowy department of the British secret service tasked with protecting the UK from threats occult and other-dimensional – in practice, HP Lovecraft's Old Gods, which turn out to be all too real. Of course, as the Horrors from Beyond Space and Time rarely recognise national boundaries, this usually comes down to saving the world as a side eff More...

What do you get if you cross Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon with Kelly McCullough's Web Mage? The Fuller Memorandum. It's where science, math and magic meet -- a fun read!

I seriously forget how much I like these Laundry Files books by Stross. Some of his stuff is worthless (cf. the Merchant Princes series) but this bunch is funny, creative, and simply a great read. GhostBusters meets the Matrix plus James Bond.

I'm sure there's a lot of detail tracking that I miss because I can't be bothered to keep it straight (i.e. there could be inconsistencies and I wouldn't notice, because I'm not reading to that level of detail at the moment), but Bob is alternately funny an More...

I've been enjoying the Laundry series a lot and was really excited to get this book. This is the third in the series which follows Mo and Bob in their continued fight to prevent Case Nightmare Green.

Essentially, there are problems within the Laundry and when Angleton goes missing, Bob is left to pick up the pieces whilst avoiding being captured by some cultists attempting to bring forward the invasion of Cthuloid creatures from other dimensions.

Unlike the other two books, which I adored, I mer More...

I quite enjoyed this book. It takes place a couple years after the events of The Jennifer Morgue, and once again Howard is drawn into a dangerous and complex web of intrigue by his superiors. Armed with only his shiny new smartphone, Bob Howard is forced to face off against the undead, ancient horrors, and worst of all, the bureaucrats within the Laundry itself.

I think this book may even have flowed better than The Jennifer Morgue, and I was pleasantly surprised by the book overall. I was worrie More...

The Laundry chronicles are the story of Bob Howard, Secret Agent and applied computational deamonologist. This is Lovecraft for the digital age. This book get arround my usual aversion to horror by being completely immersed in the burerocracy of the Brittish civil service, and by having a narator who is so cynical, I'm affraid he's going to cut himself. As usual, Stross is an excellent technical writer, though some of his prejudices show through a bit (he's a FOSS [free and open source software] More...

The 5 star rating is for people who like Stross' Laundry novels. If you've not read any of them I'd not start here not because you couldn't but because the earlier books give you a feel for Bob Howard and his world. And they're good.

In TFM we learn a bit more about Angleton, the Laundry and the threats it's dealing with. The exposition doesn't get in the way of the story though and it says a lot that I stayed up until 3am to finish this. Bob's world gets darker, the specter of CASE NIGHTMARE GR More...

3 stars to me means it's an enjoyable enough way to spend your time if you don't have anything better to do, but I could have easily not read this book and wouldn't have missed anything.

On the plus side we have Stross's witty and erudite humor about office work, computers, and cthulhu, with a reasonably engaging plot. What disappointed me was the lack of real change in the characters. This is a novel, and I expect some sort of personal transformation to have happened by the end.



SPOILER-ISH--> More...

I finished reading "The Fuller Memorandum" by Charles Stross. It is another of his Laundry novels--sort or H. P. Lovecraft crossed with Len Deighton. In that universe advanced mathematics can change reality and open up our universe to invasion by evil aliens. It's an amusing concept in which the most abstract thought is the most physically dangerous as well. I particularly like the concept of a "combat epistemologist".

Once you get over the amusement value, I find that nothing in these stories ev More...

So... We’re back to Bob.

He still rocks.

That said, though, the Fuller Memorandum didn’t hold my attention as much as the two first books. Well... Wait, that’s not correct.

I didn’t understand the Fuller Memo as well as I understood the previous works. Outlandish as the whole idea behind the Laundry books is (and if you still don’t know about computational demonologists and advanced math turned into magic you really need to check out my previous reviews), the fact remained that I could follow every More...

Thoroughly Entertaining

Another very entertaining laundry novel from Charles Stross.
He does a very good job in blending the occult and the thriller elements.

It is perhaps the most conventional of his laundry novels. I did miss having an afterword though. I really liked them in the previous two books.

This had a decent plot and plenty of amusing moments. Even the exposition scenes often make me chuckle. Occasionally it was a bit predictable but in general the plot was very well thought out and made More...

Getting back to this book, ostensibly to re-acquaint with Charles Stross's irreverent wit, before diving into his new Laundry release. I wish!

Written with Stross's usual intelligence and wit, this was a fun read. With references to everything from Heinlein (Jonathan Hoag) to Butcher (book about a wizard for hire in Chicago) to Animaniacs (Pinky and Brains), it was almost as enjoyable to look for the allusions as to follow the story line and try to sort out who the mole inside the Laundry was.

Bob Howard's boss sends him off to look at a problem in an RAF hangar without telling him why this needs Bob's particular oversight. A bystander More...

Whereas The Jennifer Morgue did not quite live up to the quality of the first in the series, The Atrocity Archives, being a bit too much of a one-trick pony, this installment was more interesting and entertaining. If you were a fan of the first books, you should enjoy this one, too. I would recommend reading them in order, rather than jumping into the series with this book. Even though each is a stand-alone novel, I think they would make more sense when read in sequence. More...

This is the third book in the Laundry series, where Stross mixes Lovecraftian horror with bureaucracy and British spy tales. It keeps the main character and back history, and tries harder to be amusing than horrifying.

This time round, rather than the Bond tropes used in The Jennifer Morgue, Stross seems inspired by LeCarre's Smiley books, which makes for a slower, more expositive writing. Unfortunately exposition and explanation does not fit well with unspeakable horrors from outer space, so the More...

Another good read from Stross. I haven't read the middle book in this set yet, but I had no trouble. Wouldn't read it as my FIRST Laundry novel, though.
Stross has a good framework here, and a good lead character. It's not hugely different from Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. This volume is darker, though. The horror in this one came to play, and if you don't like that sort of thing, don't read this. There are a couple of parts that are really quite icky. They do advance the plot, but if th More...