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Title: The Atrocity Archives |
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Review of The Atrocity Archives
- The national bestselling author takes a departure from his epic science fiction to craft this cross between Len Deighton-style espionage and H.P. Lovecraftian horror.
Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up with the endless paperwork he has to do on a daily basis. He should never be called on to do anything remotely heroic.
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Comments for The Atrocity Archives
- Posted on 2008-07-14
Call of Cthulhu meets James Bond meets Dilbert
What makes this book particularly delightful is all the accounting and bureaucracy the poor protagonist must deal with before he's allowed to save reality as we know it. Stross makes clear that there are a handful of people in the Laundry who are really good at solving the supernatural problems threatening to destroy the world, a lot of people who are really good at making the first group fill out time cards, and a much-too-large group that really doesn't seem to understand anything that's going on around them, and that should definitely not be allowed to take continuing education credits in demon summoning....
Score: 5
- Posted on 2008-04-22
Trifecta
For those of us who can understand the depth and layers of writing here, it doesn't get much better than this. One need only be steeped in Lovecraft, Howard, Mythos Lore, Newton's Telecom Dictionary, video gaming, techno gadgets and James Bond to begin to scratch the surface of the little gems found in this collection and The Jennifer Morgue. Truly unique, kind of like reading a Brian Lumley / Ian Flemming / Neil Stephenson novel?!
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-04-09
Lovecraftian sly spy thriller
Clever writing highlights this novel. Recommended for those who enjoy well-crafted plots, likable main characters, with references to the grand masters of science fiction, supernatural fiction & spy fiction.
Score: 4
- Posted on 2008-02-22
Far out, man!
What a great book! Charles Stross' "Atrocity Archives/Concrete Jungle is a mixtue of Lovecraft, Len Deighton as well as Monty Python and Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" all in one. This is a book that a reader will have to read multiple times and will glean something new from the book in every reading.
Bob Howard is an IT (Info Technology)support person for the Laundry, a British Department under the OSI banner, now known as MIV and MI VI. The Laundry is the Department that deals with the paranormal for Britain and endeavors to keep the nation free from events and creatures from other dimensions and universes that "would like to suck brains and souls from our bodies." In Mr. Stross' world, supernatural events and creatures are not conjured through arcane blood rituals but through uses of computers, mathematical formulas and other non-supernatural, technical means. Other countries have paranormal departments as part of their spy/security apparatus. For example, the U.S. paranormal department is known as the Black Chamber.
The reader discovers that no one joins the Laundry, they are forced to "join". Bob Howard "joined" the Laundry after he was discovered playing with a mathematical theorem on his computer that threatened to obliterate the town of Wolverhampton in a ghastly Lovecraftian manner. He is promoted from IT to field agent after rescuing a summoning class from a possessed classmate who did not follow the rules and discovers that his first case means saving Britain and the rest of the world from a nameless horror from another universe who is working it's way to our earth with past cooperation from a renegade SS Unit, the Ahenenerbe, who used a ghastly summoning ritual that pertains to the Holocaust, to escape the current earth at the end of WWII.
This book defies convention. This is a mixture of Science Fiction, Horror and British Humor all rolled into one fascinating mix. The reader becomes intimately involved in the minutiae of the British Civil Service and their frustrating and over beaureaucratic methods of conducting business. Bob, for example, lives in constant fear of explaining his every action and decision to the unseen but fearome "Auditors". Stross' characters are enagaging and memorable; from the sensuous and mysterious Dr. Dominique "Mo" O'Brien who has a major part to play in Bob's first mission, to the mysterious and very sinister Angleton who Bob ends up being a Private personal secretary, the British term for "Administrative Assistant", Bridget and Harriet from HR, his fellow Laundry worker roomates Pinky and Brains and Bob's slightly harried superior Andy.
I love this book. I am currently finishing "the Jennifer Morgue", the second, but hopefully not final Laundry/Bob Howard novel by Mr. Stross. Finally, if you haven't caught the direct parallel between the main character's name and a famous American writer, then you are not a true fantasy/sci-fi/horror fan. Congratulations, Mr. Stross what an excellent novel you have written.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-02-18
CthuluPunk!
What a hoot... enough inside geek jokes to choke a Gibbering Horror...
I finished it in record time... and re-read it a day later to catch everything I missed the first time!
Score: 4