Tim's review
The Jennifer Morgue
by Charles Stross
Tim's review
The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross
Tim's review
rating:
recommended for: People who need entertaining and are not too po-faced
** spoiler alert **
Better written than the Atrocity Archives - less babble. A bit of fun but you do need to know the Ian Fleming 'universe' to 'get it'.
Maybe the joke gets a bit over extended at times and the girl demon who kills through sex is a little too like Mike Carey's succubus (who came first? Carey's is the one I would choose if that is the way I have to go) but it is a good light read with some real 'moments'.
However, the greatest treat came at the end where Stross writes a clever essay demonstrating that Blofeld was maybe not such a bad guy, that SPECTRE won the Cold War and that none of us seem to mind since the superpower nuclear madness was so much more scary.
Very clever and a new take on the transvaluation of values anyone over 50 has gone through since the era of social democracy and upper class clubbability that was 'normal' for us in the 1970s. Makes you wonder what comes next from Stross, having done Deighton and Fleming, I hope he does Le Carre meets Cthulhu
Maybe the joke gets a bit over extended at times and the girl demon who kills through sex is a little too like Mike Carey's succubus (who came first? Carey's is the one I would choose if that is the way I have to go) but it is a good light read with some real 'moments'.
However, the greatest treat came at the end where Stross writes a clever essay demonstrating that Blofeld was maybe not such a bad guy, that SPECTRE won the Cold War and that none of us seem to mind since the superpower nuclear madness was so much more scary.
Very clever and a new take on the transvaluation of values anyone over 50 has gone through since the era of social democracy and upper class clubbability that was 'normal' for us in the 1970s. Makes you wonder what comes next from Stross, having done Deighton and Fleming, I hope he does Le Carre meets Cthulhu
