Oh bummer. I loved the book that this is a sequel to, The Atrocity Archives, which is a great mashup of genres - spy thriller set in a world where magic is real and a ponderous security bureaucracy is tasked with keeping Lovecraftian horrors from being invoked by accident by the unknowing.

But this one was like beating my head against a brick wall. My problem is explained by the afterword, which provides a great deal of exegesis about the James Bond stories that this volume is based on. I have never seen or read any version of Bond, because it's not the sort of thing I enjoy. So not only didn't I get the references - also, this is no doubt a really well written, clever version of something that is not the sort of thing I enjoy.

So I feel like my dislike of this book is not really the author's fault. More a case of "buyer beware" and me not finding out more about the book before I started instead of assuming it would be just like the first one.