The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files Book 1)

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross is the first book in The Laundry Series, and introduces our hero, Bob Howard, and his contemporary bureaucratic super-secret anti-James Bondian occult government magic SWAT team of mathematicians, cryptographers, programmers, network administrators, paranormals, zombies, cosmologists, soul-eaters, and guardians of the United Kingdom, and hence all of Einsteinian spacetime, against the Lovecraftian Great Old Ones Who Sleep in the Drowned Cities.So magic is real, but it’s a branch of mathematics. But this is not “pull a bunny out of a hat” magic, it’s the kind where you solve N-th order differential equations and then a nameless horror from another reality in the multiverse comes through a portal and eats London. The Laundry is the UK government agency that prevents that from happening.This is really more fun than anyone should be allowed to have. Stross has created a slice of our contemporary world with a twist that sounds completely plausible, yet is so outside of the world of budget department meetings that their juxtaposition is simply hysterical.Bob Howard is a great protagonist. He has just the right amount of sarcastic wit, disrespect for the bureaucracy, and computer programmer frumpiness, leveled with dedication to get the job done, that you know that nothing is going to stand in his way. He’s a nerd, but he’s not bumbling, he’s totally competent.Being the introduction to the series, Stross does a good job of explaining this world without writing too many data-dumps, and the ones that are there are fun to read anyway. The plot follows Bob’s efforts to find they bad guys, stop them from unleashing a nameless horror into our world, and save the girl.I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who is a technical computer geek, Science Fiction or Horror fan, but Stross’ sentences and constructed metaphors (you’re not dead, you’re “metabolically challenged”) are so much fun to read, that anyone who likes puzzles and language will get a real kick out this world.

This, the first book in the Laundry Files series, is an interesting mixture of genres told from the point of view of Bob Howard. He's an IT guy who has been working for the Laundry for a few years - underpaid, shares a house in London with a couple of mad scientists, and looking to break into Field Ops out of sheer boredom. The Laundry is the super-secret government organization tasked with "defending the earth from the scum of the multiverse" and keeping the existence of magic hidden from the general public. He is sent to Santa Cruz, California to help out a professor at UCSC - a British national who isn't being allowed to leave the States, courtesy of the Dark Chamber (the US answer to the Laundry). Then things start happening...This book is a mixture of hard scifi, bureaucratic satire, alternative history, spy genre and a touch of romance. It's very enjoyable, but I found myself blipping over the detailed mathematics of it all (hence the four star review). Don't let this put you off the book, however. Bob is a very likable character and makes an excellent narrator. We are introduced to other characters who will play parts in future Laundry Files stories, most notably Angleton, Bob's scary and mysterious manager. He's my favorite character and he and Bob make a memorable team."Atrocity Archives" is rather short and is paired with an excellent short story which serves as a follow up, "The Concrete Jungle." The short story form is very well suited to Laundry adventures and I hope Mr. Stross gives us more of them in the future. I'm a fan of this entire series and highly recommend that you start here and move on sequentially in order to get the most out of the series.

I heard about Charles Stross on a certain facebook horror books group, and when I checked out The Atrocity Archives (A Laundry Files Novel), I had to give it a try. It’s a brilliant blend of comedy and horror. The Capital Laundry Services is the front for a super-secret British government agency. Their mission? To protect humanity from all the horrors they’re unaware of. Like most government projects they run on paperwork and back-stabbing. Bob is our erstwhile hero. He’s tech support, but he really wants to be a field agent. Be careful what you wish for, Bob! While trying to dodge the manipulations of his direct colleagues and superiors, he ends up roped into a higher-up’s attempts to keep people safe from the unknown.This is a world in which math can destroy the universe, and Bob’s first, miserable field agent assignment is to break into an office and destroy a math paper. (“If he goes public and reproduces [the paper] we could be facing a Level One reality excursion within weeks.”) This is a book that drops gems like “the Turing-Lovecraft theorem.” You don’t need to be able to understand the magic-babble in order to have a lot of fun reading about it! I expect that a reader versed in math or physics, however, probably would get more out of it than I did. There are other universes, and creatures from those universes who, for one reason or another, would like to find their way into ours. This is what Bob and his colleagues are meant to prevent from happening.Bob is an entertaining guy. He’s pretty normal, all things considered, despite the situation he finds himself in. He has roommates (Pinky and Brains, both of whom also work for the Laundry), he has a psycho quasi-ex girlfriend (honestly, not fond of that character even though we don’t see her much–she’s an unfortunate stereotype), and he’s taking courses at work that are basically “computational demonology for dummies.”I’m so-so on the female characters, at least at first. Bob’s colleagues and psycho ex are stereotypes. But a couple of late-arriving women are much more interesting. One of them needs to be rescued a lot, though.It was confusing that the story I was reading basically ended two-thirds of the way through, and then the last third is a separate story involving most of the same characters and through-plots and taking place after the first story. I was kind of expecting one full tale. A few details in the second story confused me a bit, but I hung on by my fingernails and enjoyed the ride.Content note for death, monsters, and Nazis, but this isn’t a gross-out horror novel.

It's so much fun, and truly scary when you think of the implications of what he does with combining fantasy elements and 2003 technology (at one point the characters are trying to avoid any cameras which would be impossible nowadays)

I have wanted to read the Laundry Files for a few years, so I finally decided to go in and pick up this first entry in the series. The premise is that supernatural horror of the mythos as expounded by HP Lovecraft are real. And that secret government ops exist to fight these threats and hush up their existence.The Laundry is the British version of such a secretive organisation. Bob Howard, who is one of its field agents, must fight through both paperwork and politics if he is to save his country and the world.The book is a compilation of two stories. Atrocity Archives is the first story, and the first entry in the series. It has a fantastic premise of how the nazis in World War II tried to weaponise the occult and how their successors are still at it in the present. The story as written is a bit hard to follow, given the author's love for computer jargon. It breaks the pacing and forces me to double back and read again to better understand what is going on. The later parts of the story do get unnervingly creepy, but I believe it could have been better still if the flow and tension of the story were improved.The Concrete Jungle is the second story. It has an apparently less interesting premise than the preceding story and centers on a strange sculpture of concrete cows. But it is written significantly better and is much more of a page turner. I actually enjoyed this story a whole lot more than I did the first.I say, give this series a try. This first book is not perfect, but you might like it.

I really enjoyed this book for its unique way to portrait magic and occult. It's like the IT Crowd meets Cthulhu

Loved the book, wished the sequals would be similar but sadly each is written in a different style, Read this, forget the rest.

Not everyone is as freaked out as they should be when confronted by the office red tape! But will they learn their lesson because getting the sack is not the worst thing that could happen. Pay attention, or else! It might be called the Civil Service but nothing says it has to be civil... but if you don't think it has an important service to offer, woe is ye.The tech geek turns: A surprise to some, but understanding stuff can help more than office politics. If you are unsure of that to begin, you'll quickly see the advantage, especially when it's about the cuthulu-esque! And pay grades definately take a back seat to knowing what you're doing when saving the world... though the reports still need to be filed in triplicate, and expense vouchers will be checked.I was surprised as this writer has a unique style and I notice some other reviewers don't like it. I suppose there's a moment to get adjusted, perhaps also a question of taste, but I thought the writing masterful. This book is nearly as good as his best work 'Accelerando', also a bit techie but that makes it more real and relevant. This is not light weight froth, it feels real and credible. But the story is not a hard serious read - it's as fun and gripping as alot of popular light weight stuff, but you come out richer for the read.Oh yes, RECOMMENDED