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Books by Charles Stross

Cover of The Atrocity Archives.

The Atrocity Archives

by Charles Stross · published 2004 · read 2015-07-02

★★★★★

Soo, the beginning of my favourite Stross series. You know: magic is advanced maths, powerful geeks and really powerful burocracy.

Cover of The Labyrinth Index.

The Labyrinth Index

by Charles Stross · published 2018 · read 2018-10-16

★★★★☆

The Labyrinth Index, the latest entry in Charlie Stross' Laundry Files series … escalates. When the last volume of the Laundry Files featured an apocalyptic ending, I was under the impression that Charlie was fed up with reality overtaking his books pre-publication, and escalated to a level reality isn't yet willing to follow.

Cover of Saturn's Children.

Saturn’s Children

by Charles Stross · published 2008 · read 2017-11-19

★★★★☆

Post-human world sexbots vs post-human world butlers, man. It's so much better than it sounds.

Cover of Empire Games.

Empire Games

by Charles Stross · published 2017 · read 2018-03-03

★★★★☆

This is what I wanted Merchant Princess to be. We see Rita do cool stuff without being too Mary Sue-ish, we get background, we get development, we get politics, and all that without being one giant economics textbook. Moar!

Cover of The Rhesus Chart.

The Rhesus Chart

by Charles Stross · published 2014 · read 2015-08-04

★★★★☆

We meet Mhari again! Bob is amazingly grown-up about it. Everybody realizes they get played early on … and still: people die. A lot of them. Including Angleton. Because their opponent is a century-old PHANG.

Cover of The Delirium Brief.

The Delirium Brief

by Charles Stross · published 2017 · read 2018-10-16

★★★★☆

The Delirium Brief is yet another entry in the Laundry series by Charlie Stross, and with our first and favourite POV character Bob to boot! It features a culmination of a lot of characters, concepts and plot points introduced in previous parts of the series, which is nice in general – except that the first quarter of the book is exposition/reminder of the who's who and what's what of the Laundryverse, which felt very tedious.

Cover of The Apocalypse Codex.

The Apocalypse Codex

by Charles Stross · published 2012 · read 2015-08-04

★★★★☆

Bob has come far, and is now sent to the USA with Penelope and Johnny (to him: external contractors), where they have to deal with a super-charismatic Christian Cult trying to wake the Sleeper in the Pyramid.

Cover of The Jennifer Morgue.

The Jennifer Morgue

by Charles Stross · published 2006 · read 2015-07-07

★★★★☆

(This review is only to make me remember what happened in a book and why I liked it.)

Cover of Dark State.

Dark State

by Charles Stross · published 2018 · read 2018-04-06

★★★★☆

Tremendous amounts of fun! We get all the things I hoped for: More cool grandpa, more cool Rose, more cool girlfriend, (also otherwise cool women, especially the Princess seems to rock), and more cultural juxtaposition. The evil guy within the Commonwealth isn't … openly evil? I'm not even sure which side of their story I beliefe yet. And then we get dropped a huge cliffhanger on us (Princess missing, Kurt about to visit the Commonwealth, Adam The First Man dead) that is straight up illegal in the EU. Good thing the UK is seceding, if you look at it that way.

Cover of Overtime.

Overtime

by Charles Stross · published 2009 · read 2015-07-18

★★★★☆

Light reading. Bob has to deal with Christmas terrors from beyond. Very Charly, Much Stross, Q'thulhu.

Cover of The Annihilation Score.

The Annihilation Score

by Charles Stross · published 2015 · read 2015-08-04

★★★★☆

A book from Mo's perspective, right after the semi-break-up that concluded the Rhesus Chart! Insight into the Bone Violin, and a lot of Super Heroes.

Cover of The Fuller Memorandum.

The Fuller Memorandum

by Charles Stross · published 2010 · read 2015-07-22

★★★★☆

The Fuller Memorandum details the break-up of a cultist organization and a Laundry leak, we also get to know TEAPOT and Angleton's story. We see Mo and Bob as a married couple, and Bob on his way up. Good work, to my mind a generic Laundry book if there ever was one, what with the exorcism of WW2 airplanes that escalates into horrors. Nice read nonetheless.

Cover of Down on the Farm.

Down on the Farm

by Charles Stross · published 2008 · read 2015-07-07

★★★★☆

Bob goes visit the Funny Farm and deals with a Mainframe. I mostly loved the use of a chessboard as 2,5(?)-Turing machine.

Cover of Equoid.

Equoid

by Charles Stross · published 2013 · read 2015-08-04

★★★★☆

Of course Unicorns are terrifying when CStross himself writes about them. Short, but enjoyable, if a bit gory.

Cover of The Concrete Jungle.

The Concrete Jungle

by Charles Stross · published 2004 · read 2015-07-03

★★★★☆

I love Detective Inspector Josephine Sullivan. And Basilisks. And everything cstross thinks about firmware, public sector management and Angleton.

Cover of Missile Gap.

Missile Gap

by Charles Stross · published 2006 · read 2016-09-20

★★★☆☆

Locus award winning novella, where the Earth finds itself suddenly remapped onto a flat surface. An agent called Gregor Samsa plays a role.

Cover of The Family Trade.

The Family Trade

by Charles Stross · published 2004 · read 2016-02-05

★★★☆☆

The Family Trade introduces the Merchant Princess worlds (all three of them) and takes us along with Miriam in discovering the mechanics (mostly economical mechanics) of those worlds. Solid world building, this is probably hard economic science fiction. Not my main area of interest but apart from some passages on trading that became too in-detail for me, I enjoyed the book.

Cover of Halting State.

Halting State

by Charles Stross · published 2007 · read 2015-08-17

★★★☆☆

Robbery of a dot-com-startup. Set in 2018, in independent Scotland. Alas.

Cover of A Tall Tail.

A Tall Tail

by Charles Stross · published 2012 · read 2020-04-22

★★★☆☆

A nice Stross short story. Interesting how different cultures show off about different things, but in completely similar ways. Umberto Eco will throw down with medieval/literature facts, and Charlie just needs you to know how much he knows about chemistry off the top of his head.

Cover of The Nightmare Stacks.

The Nightmare Stacks

by Charles Stross · published 2016 · read 2016-10-02

★★★☆☆

This Laundry novel features Alex as the protagonist, going up against elvish aliens and his family's expectations... He's not the most lovable character we've seen so far, but he works out as a generic protagonist.

Cover of Bit Rot.

Bit Rot

by Charles Stross · published 2010 · read 2017-11-28

★★★☆☆

Short story in the Freyaverse.

Cover of The Hidden Family.

The Hidden Family

by Charles Stross · published 2005 · read 2016-02-05

★★★☆☆

I'm just not sold on economical science fiction. And I think this might be why I didn't particularly like following this book's story line. We get a third world, we get a dramatic showdown with a character sacrifice thrown in in the end, and that's … it. Other than that it's slow, tiring movement of goods and ideas between three worlds. Didn't work for me, might work for an economy major.

Cover of The Clan Corporate.

The Clan Corporate

by Charles Stross · published 2006 · read 2016-02-07

★★☆☆☆

Miriam has to fight against everything: the family pressured by the secret services, her grief over Roland, the looming marriage … and nothing happens. Miriam spends most of the book locked in the second world, unable to do anything, and events unfold painfully slow (save for the last pages). Didn't really know what to do with this book.