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Thursday, March 18, 2010

The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross



Because I despise retyping summaries and this one does a good job of summarizing the book:

From Amazon.com: In this alternately chilling and hilarious sequel to The Atrocity Archives (2004) from Hugo-winner Stross, Bob Howard is a computer übergeek employed by the Laundry, a secret British agency assigned to clean up incursions from other realities caused by the inadvertent manipulation of complex mathematical equations: in other words, magic. In 1975, the CIA used Howard Hughes's Glomar Explorer in a bungled attempt to raise a sunken Soviet submarine in order to access the Jennifer Morgue, an occult device that allows communication with the dead. Now a ruthless billionaire intends to try again, even if by doing so he awakens the Great Old Ones, who thwarted the earlier expedition. It's up to Bob and a collection of British eccentrics even Monty Python would consider odd to stop the bad guy and save the world, while getting receipts for all expenditures or else face the most dreaded menace of all: the Laundry's own auditors. Stross has a marvelous time making eldritch horror appear commonplace in the face of bureaucracy. (Dec.)
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**Spoiler Alert!***

I have mixed feelings about this book. I love the quirkiness, the snarkiness, and the not so subtle one-liners. I grew annoyed with the Bond-theme, and I like Bond, I've seen'em all (except maybe a couple of the newer ones).

I really like the whole idea that there are these computer geeks (ie, Bob) who specialize in demonology and fight off Cthulu daemons from other dimensions with their iPhones. However, I was irritated that there was all this sexual tension between the two main characters then pffitt! book done.

More often than not I found myself skimming along wondering when the characters were going to stop getting shoved around and start doing some shoving of their own.

So, as I agreed with Disorganized, As Usual, it needed more Lovecraft and less Bond. Still, if you liked Atrocity Archives, you might like this one. You'll just have to read it and decide for yourself.

2 comments:

Gail O'Connor said...

So you're saying Bob needed to grow some balls? :)

Kristin said...

Yeah...I guess I am saying that. But I still like Bob. :)

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