This book has a little humour and enough horror and suspense but it feels like a middle-book of a series.
Although I think the book can be read on it's own and it does have a satisfactory conclusion, several hints are given about the possible direction of future books. There was a little too much of "We'll just keep watching him and decide if he should join our cabal later."

On the other hand, I was surprised by he appears to be heading in the bureaucracy and I will eagerly await Stross' next book in the series.

Stross was recently interviewed on Reddit and I enjoyed his description of how he writes. As it relates to this review, he described writing about one book a year so that he already knows what he is scheduled to write for the next three or more years. I don't know if I could work on this kind of long-term timeline.

More on his interview at my blog:
http://creativitiproject.blogspot.kr/...