davidscrimshaw's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoy Charles Stross Laundry series where horrific monsters meet horrific bureaucracy.
This one culminates at the Last Night at the Proms - an added bonus for a brass band player like me.
I do have to report that the cat in this story does not talk. I'm not sure why not because Mr. Stross can definitely write good talking cat stories. It seems like he just doesn't want to. Kind of like his dumb reasons for not writing a sequel to Iron Sunrise.
This one culminates at the Last Night at the Proms - an added bonus for a brass band player like me.
I do have to report that the cat in this story does not talk. I'm not sure why not because Mr. Stross can definitely write good talking cat stories. It seems like he just doesn't want to. Kind of like his dumb reasons for not writing a sequel to Iron Sunrise.
bakudreamer's review
3.0
It's the next one that'll have the ' elves with tanks ' I think Stross agrees with me that ' mass-effect charm ' is probably the most dangerous superpower.
thesillyoldbear's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
kimu's review against another edition
5.0
So great to finally hear from Mo. Loved the audiobook narrator on this one. While there are a couple of tired gender tropes in here, overall Stross does a solid job of finally giving us a story focused on one of the best characters in the Laundry Files. Is she a perfect person? No. Is she interesting? Yes. It might be that I'm a woman of a similar age to Mo in this story (also married for a long time to a computer geek), but the parts about Mo's middle aged woman superpower of invisibility really resonated.
The only bit of the story that was actually jarring was when Mo finishes giving a presentation and checks her make up with a compact in the middle of a busy conference environment. I've been to a lot of work coherences, I've known a lot of professional women, and I can't imagine this ever happening in a million years. Women don't do this. I think there was supposed to be a plot point here, but TBH I momentarily lost my ability to follow the plot because this really pissed me off.
Still giving this book 5 stars because of the stellar audiobook narrator and for Stross overall doing a great job highlighting a favorite character of mine. More Mo-focused books please!
The only bit of the story that was actually jarring was when Mo finishes giving a presentation and checks her make up with a compact in the middle of a busy conference environment. I've been to a lot of work coherences, I've known a lot of professional women, and I can't imagine this ever happening in a million years. Women don't do this. I think there was supposed to be a plot point here, but TBH I momentarily lost my ability to follow the plot because this really pissed me off.
Still giving this book 5 stars because of the stellar audiobook narrator and for Stross overall doing a great job highlighting a favorite character of mine. More Mo-focused books please!
thearbiter89's review
3.0
The Annihilation Score, is, unfortunately, a somewhat unsatisfying entry in the brave new world of the Laundry series.
Score is the first novel not told from the perspective of Bob Howard, Laundry IT geek turned seasoned-despite-himself field operative. Instead, it focuses on Mo, a fellow Laundry wetworks specialist and Bob's wife. Mo is a seasoned veteran in her own right - she wields a powerful occult weapon, a violin shaped out of human bones and powered by their agony, recovered by the British in World War II, with a mind and malignance of its own.
In previous books, her own adventures were somewhat of a side-show to Bob's own crises-of-the-week, but the stuff she got up to was just as, if not grimmer than, Bob's. And their decade-long marriage is on the rocks because of the pressures of maintaining a life of normalcy while being the carriers of vast and horrific thaumaturgic prowess. Oh, and their respective occult powers are possibly lethal to each other, causing them to have to live apart.
The issue with Score is that it's just not as fun to read as the other Laundry books. It has a psychologically grim outlook - depicting Mo entering the throes of a work-induced nervous breakdown, beginning an affair behind Bob's back, and trying her best to tamp down on the new emerging threat of the book - i.e. people developing superpowers as the walls of reality thin and CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN approaches.
The way Stross writes Mo isn't the way he writes Bob - to his credit, he's self-aware enough to try to give Mo a unique voice, while acknowledging that the years of cohabitation with Bob have given her the propensity to acknowledge some of his verbal tics when employing them for effect. But Mo, despite everything, comes off as not the most likeable of characters. It's an uncomfortable admission to make because it invites the idea that strong female characters that exhibit dominant traits are given short shrift by readers who expect more conformity to gender stereotypes.
But Mo gets up to stuff like going on dates with superpowered police officers, and comparing Bob unfavorably to them in some departments, and after you've been in Bob's headspace for a while, it can seem disquieting and uncomfortable. Should we judge Mo poorly for indulging in marital indiscretions? Or should we be sympathetic and buy her (seemingly self-serving) narrative for her actions?
But Mo's characterisation isn't actually why I felt dissatisfied with Score. Score is not just a less fun book due to its narrative perspective, it its premise - superheroes - is also just not in keeping with the strictures of the Laundry universe.
Just as Rhesus Chart was about vampires, Score focuses on superheroes. People are developing magical powers and the cultural lens of the superhero is being applied by the general public to apprehend the phenomenon. But Stross doesn't really explain the mechanisms of action by which some of these superpowers manifest - superheroes who can defy the physical laws of the incumbent universe, or who grow horns and fur - the established rules of the Laundry universe don't explain how those kinds of abilities can manifest out of the whole multiverse-premise. Hitherto most of the occult stuff could be explained, but superheroes just don't really fit, either thematically or logically, in the Laundry universe, at least, not in the way their powers were explicated.
Score is also a lot more about bureaucracy than it is about battling occult horrors. Much of the book deals with Mo working with a team to set up and run a Transhuman Policy Directive, a police unit tasked, ostensibly, with providing a role model for superheroes and clamp down on vigilantes. This is bureaucracy as it is, played straight - without Bob's usual snark or odd turns of phrase to assert the absurdity of it all.
And the threat - the Big Bad - that Mo faces in Score is far more of an abstraction - her personal demons, her mind-controlling violin that makes her dream of dancing, a cartoonish villain called Dr Freudstein (and the entity that he represents), the vague threat of a superpowered humanity, predatory politicians - adds up to a narrative arc that is at turns unfocused as it is frustratingly meandering.
And when it comes to the denouement and the big narrative revelation, I was left nonplussed at the convolutedness of the villain plot and the relative triviality of its machinations, compared to the world-destroying stakes of previous offerings.
So, Score - a book about superheroes, bureaucracy, and mental breakdown - one that somehow doesn't quite fit into the Laundryverse.
I give this book: 3 out of 5 prom tickets
Score is the first novel not told from the perspective of Bob Howard, Laundry IT geek turned seasoned-despite-himself field operative. Instead, it focuses on Mo, a fellow Laundry wetworks specialist and Bob's wife. Mo is a seasoned veteran in her own right - she wields a powerful occult weapon, a violin shaped out of human bones and powered by their agony, recovered by the British in World War II, with a mind and malignance of its own.
In previous books, her own adventures were somewhat of a side-show to Bob's own crises-of-the-week, but the stuff she got up to was just as, if not grimmer than, Bob's. And their decade-long marriage is on the rocks because of the pressures of maintaining a life of normalcy while being the carriers of vast and horrific thaumaturgic prowess. Oh, and their respective occult powers are possibly lethal to each other, causing them to have to live apart.
The issue with Score is that it's just not as fun to read as the other Laundry books. It has a psychologically grim outlook - depicting Mo entering the throes of a work-induced nervous breakdown, beginning an affair behind Bob's back, and trying her best to tamp down on the new emerging threat of the book - i.e. people developing superpowers as the walls of reality thin and CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN approaches.
The way Stross writes Mo isn't the way he writes Bob - to his credit, he's self-aware enough to try to give Mo a unique voice, while acknowledging that the years of cohabitation with Bob have given her the propensity to acknowledge some of his verbal tics when employing them for effect. But Mo, despite everything, comes off as not the most likeable of characters. It's an uncomfortable admission to make because it invites the idea that strong female characters that exhibit dominant traits are given short shrift by readers who expect more conformity to gender stereotypes.
But Mo gets up to stuff like going on dates with superpowered police officers, and comparing Bob unfavorably to them in some departments, and after you've been in Bob's headspace for a while, it can seem disquieting and uncomfortable. Should we judge Mo poorly for indulging in marital indiscretions? Or should we be sympathetic and buy her (seemingly self-serving) narrative for her actions?
But Mo's characterisation isn't actually why I felt dissatisfied with Score. Score is not just a less fun book due to its narrative perspective, it its premise - superheroes - is also just not in keeping with the strictures of the Laundry universe.
Just as Rhesus Chart was about vampires, Score focuses on superheroes. People are developing magical powers and the cultural lens of the superhero is being applied by the general public to apprehend the phenomenon. But Stross doesn't really explain the mechanisms of action by which some of these superpowers manifest - superheroes who can defy the physical laws of the incumbent universe, or who grow horns and fur - the established rules of the Laundry universe don't explain how those kinds of abilities can manifest out of the whole multiverse-premise. Hitherto most of the occult stuff could be explained, but superheroes just don't really fit, either thematically or logically, in the Laundry universe, at least, not in the way their powers were explicated.
Score is also a lot more about bureaucracy than it is about battling occult horrors. Much of the book deals with Mo working with a team to set up and run a Transhuman Policy Directive, a police unit tasked, ostensibly, with providing a role model for superheroes and clamp down on vigilantes. This is bureaucracy as it is, played straight - without Bob's usual snark or odd turns of phrase to assert the absurdity of it all.
And the threat - the Big Bad - that Mo faces in Score is far more of an abstraction - her personal demons, her mind-controlling violin that makes her dream of dancing, a cartoonish villain called Dr Freudstein (and the entity that he represents), the vague threat of a superpowered humanity, predatory politicians - adds up to a narrative arc that is at turns unfocused as it is frustratingly meandering.
And when it comes to the denouement and the big narrative revelation, I was left nonplussed at the convolutedness of the villain plot and the relative triviality of its machinations, compared to the world-destroying stakes of previous offerings.
So, Score - a book about superheroes, bureaucracy, and mental breakdown - one that somehow doesn't quite fit into the Laundryverse.
I give this book: 3 out of 5 prom tickets
hopeful_reader_2020's review
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
eol's review
adventurous
dark
funny
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
thedauthi's review against another edition
3.0
This is actually the weakest Laundry Files book so far, in my opinion. Mo as the main character was good in theory, but didn't work in this book. In fact, here's some really damning praise: the best parts of this book are the parts of the previous book from Mo's perspective.
The superheros as symptom of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN feels like it's opening a big can of worms for the universe. The management-fixes-everything fits the bureaucromancy-based world of the Laundry well, but the actual feel of the story fits Robert Aspirin much more than Stross.
Mild Spoilers Follow:
One big part of that is that, well, Mo doesn't seem to LIKE Bob in her head-space most of the time, to the point that it makes her... unlikable. There are a couple of scenes where the narrative shows otherwise, but generally, she's either disparaging towards him or disregarding his feelings altogether. I -think- this was trying to show her as an individual inching towards a nervous breakdown, and her feelings towards Bob are more a symptom that she's inching in that direction, but it just doesn't work here. Maybe if this wasn't the first book with Mo being the primary protagonist, it would have, but we have no baseline to go from.
I think that's a big part of the problem. I got this, found out that Mo was the driving force, and thought, "Cool. I'll see some Agent Candid!". Before this book, I would have told you I thought Candid was possibly more interesting than Bob. Now? I take it back.
The story itself is mediocre. I just expect better of Stross. Generally, a fantastic juxtaposition of the normal and the strange is what the Laundry Files presents. While I'm not normally of the clan of "It's different and therefore wrong", this presenting of the weird-as-the-new-normal didn't work. Maybe just because it just felt so abrupt? There was only the smallest backdrop of society changing (an odd omission from Stross). I think the idea was that everything happened relatively suddenly, but it still felt like there should have been much more violent cultural shifts.
Instead, I spent 80% of the book reading about her org chart, often in such detail that even I - normally someone into this kind of thing - started getting bored.
I will say that the other 20% - and the last 10% in particular - of the book made up for a lot. We see Candid in action, a bit of world-building, and the fleshing out of characters that are interesting tools for Stross to use later.
All in all? It's a below-average Laundry Files book, which still puts it as a good book, but don't expect it to be the best thing you read this year.
The superheros as symptom of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN feels like it's opening a big can of worms for the universe. The management-fixes-everything fits the bureaucromancy-based world of the Laundry well, but the actual feel of the story fits Robert Aspirin much more than Stross.
Mild Spoilers Follow:
Spoiler
One big part of that is that, well, Mo doesn't seem to LIKE Bob in her head-space most of the time, to the point that it makes her... unlikable. There are a couple of scenes where the narrative shows otherwise, but generally, she's either disparaging towards him or disregarding his feelings altogether. I -think- this was trying to show her as an individual inching towards a nervous breakdown, and her feelings towards Bob are more a symptom that she's inching in that direction, but it just doesn't work here. Maybe if this wasn't the first book with Mo being the primary protagonist, it would have, but we have no baseline to go from.
I think that's a big part of the problem. I got this, found out that Mo was the driving force, and thought, "Cool. I'll see some Agent Candid!". Before this book, I would have told you I thought Candid was possibly more interesting than Bob. Now? I take it back.
The story itself is mediocre. I just expect better of Stross. Generally, a fantastic juxtaposition of the normal and the strange is what the Laundry Files presents. While I'm not normally of the clan of "It's different and therefore wrong", this presenting of the weird-as-the-new-normal didn't work. Maybe just because it just felt so abrupt? There was only the smallest backdrop of society changing (an odd omission from Stross). I think the idea was that everything happened relatively suddenly, but it still felt like there should have been much more violent cultural shifts.
Instead, I spent 80% of the book reading about her org chart, often in such detail that even I - normally someone into this kind of thing - started getting bored.
I will say that the other 20% - and the last 10% in particular - of the book made up for a lot. We see Candid in action, a bit of world-building, and the fleshing out of characters that are interesting tools for Stross to use later.
All in all? It's a below-average Laundry Files book, which still puts it as a good book, but don't expect it to be the best thing you read this year.
laci's review against another edition
2.0
Meh. What a disappointment. I did like the idea of switching to Mo. She'd been in the background for so long, and seemed like a nice character. But sadly, the entire book was mostly drudgery about meetings and committees and more meetings. Mo was always self-centered and a horrible, hypocritical wife.
I'd also hoped for more Mo/Bob interactions, because in the Bob books, she was most often sent on an errand somewhere and didn't appear in many scenes. But the same thing is done here to Bob.
Also, given that the two were portrayed as vastly different people, I'd expected the narration to have a different tone, but I'm not sure that was accomplished. And she quite often indulged in the same kind of quips Bob would - sometimes she prepended it with "as Bob would say", sometimes not. (Note that I don't have anything against this *in principle* - you can hardly be married to someone for 10 years and not pick up at least *some* of their mannerisms.)
I'd also hoped for more Mo/Bob interactions, because in the Bob books, she was most often sent on an errand somewhere and didn't appear in many scenes. But the same thing is done here to Bob.
Also, given that the two were portrayed as vastly different people, I'd expected the narration to have a different tone, but I'm not sure that was accomplished. And she quite often indulged in the same kind of quips Bob would - sometimes she prepended it with "as Bob would say", sometimes not. (Note that I don't have anything against this *in principle* - you can hardly be married to someone for 10 years and not pick up at least *some* of their mannerisms.)