Review: The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross

[miko]

The Jennifer Morgue is the second-ish book in the Laundry Files series by Charles Stross. I previously reviewed the first one and quite enjoyed it... this one, less so. By the by, I'm tagging by author at the bottom of posts now to make it easier to hop back to old related reviews. Not quite as classy as finding the link and adding it in the post itself, but it's something.

The central conceit in this book is that it's supposed to play out like a Bond film - they're under a magical geas that forces it to. Although I didn't mind the "twist" (spoiler: turns out the nerdy main character is not a good Bond type), Bond tropes aren't a thing I really enjoy at all, and there was too much of that and too little of the math-summons-monsters interest of the previous book. It's hard not to feel like this book is a skeezy wish fulfillment story for most of it, although it did pick up a bit at the end.

I recently saw someone comment that Stross is hit or miss - worth reading if someone recommends a book specifically, but don't try to read his whole catalog. I think I'm in agreement and won't be continuing with this series.