Dead Lies Dreaming (New Management, book 1) by Charles Stross

[james_davis_nicoll]

Dead Lies Dreaming (New Management, book 1) by Charles Stross

Comments

[ba_munronoe]

I see Stross is continuing his "let's make each book in the series a new genre" idea for the Laundry series (they're all cosmic horror, if less so than they used to be, but this one is a James Bond story! This one is a caper story! This one has Elves in it!). Sounds like good fun, although I wish there would be some venturing abroad from the anglosphere: I'd love to know what's going on in the Russian or Chinese equivalents of the Laundry (or for that matter the Iranian equivalent) - they can't all have been taken over by agents of malevolent gods, could they?

[(Anonymous)]

There's been a bit of that - one of the Laundry books puts its finger squarely on why I despise Colorado Springs.

[(Anonymous)]

There's a novella due in the not too distant future which is Bob in Japan.

[(Anonymous)]

Excellent!

[ba_munronoe]

I shall keep an eye out for it. (In response to the other anonymous: Colorado Springs is, as far as I am aware, still part of the Anglosphere. Perhaps you're using a different definition?)

[scott_sanford]

This is a very prompt review. I didn't expect you to officially notice it so quickly. Nicely done!

[bolindbergh]

The review copy arrived a mere four months ago.

[scott_sanford]

That's still faster than I've read some books.

Come to think of it, I have a book on trains I picked up at the Utah Westercon in 2019 which I still have not read yet.

[dormouse1953]

I've just finished reading a book I bought at the 2009 Worldcon.

[bibliofile]

Progress! Progress can be good.

[davidgoldfarb]

So the big bad magic user who has disappeared into a pocket dimension but whose body we have not seen is surely dead. Yeah, right.

[ba_munronoe]

Well, as long as he's only Comic Book Dead, Mr. Stross has the option of bringing him back if he writes himself into a corner. But I had the impression that his absence is balanced by that fact that Bob is at some risk of becoming him.

[davidgoldfarb]

I feel quite confident that we have not seen the last of Mr. de Montfort Bigge.

[autopope]

You are correct!

Not a spoiler, honest: the next two books in the new series are now scheduled: IN HIS HOUSE is due on my editor's desk next month, and BONES AND NIGHTMARES by October. No definite publication dates yet, and I think it's safe to say that Rupert doesn't actually show up in the flesh again until early in BONES AND NIGHTMARES, although his presence is palpable in the middle book of the trilogy.

[bolindbergh]

Either the door won't remain closed, or you can have more than one door to the same neverland. I look forward to finding out which.

[ba_munronoe]

Hah! You faked me out. Good show, sir.

[davidgoldfarb]

I'm afraid I didn't do so on purpose. I thought that "big bad magic user" obviously referred to Rupert de M.-B. in this context.

[(Anonymous)]

Some pockets are... awkwardly small?

[kithrup]

haha. I had to tell him you'd reviewed this.

Oops.

Anyway: I read this a while ago, and I liked it. It's a shockingly upbeat book from Stross. It even has a happy ending.

[keith_morrison]

Like, happy for the humans or happy for the shoggoths who get to chew on some femurs?

[kithrup]

Surprisingly, for the humans. I mean, not an end to the story, pretty clearly, but it ends pretty happily.

Remember, so did, e.g., The Atrocity Archives.

[ba_munronoe]

Even Lovecraft had some happy endings. (The Dunwich Horror ended well for everyone save for poor old Yog-Sothoth, who lost two sons and a planet thanks to those meddling academics and their dog).