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ImpAtom posted:That is a plot beat for upcoming books. To say anything more is big spoilers. Ohh gotcha that's fine, so long as it wasn't something explained in #3's ending that I totally missed. With #2, I think what was really frustrating on top of everything else was the whole story wasn't bad- Bob getting partnered with a sexy Innsmouth lady and going deep-sea diving for a sleepy elder one while his girlfriend gets jealous and fumes from the sidelines is awesome, that's enough to build a whole book around. But basically the first 50% didn't actually matter, and the weird Ian Flemming stuff felt like it'd been shoehorned in everywhere and really badly derailed an otherwise-serviceable setup.
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Jul 25, 2019 18:13
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The first three books are written to mimic various spy/cthulu novels so are quite different in construction. In the rest of the series it's its own thing.
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Jul 25, 2019 18:35
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I'm definitely enjoying the series so far- my only really big complaint comes down to Bob's job. The first book, in particular, did a really good job of capturing how tedious and soul-crushing a lot of intelligence work is, and that was a heck of a lot fun, but the story also demands action to a certain extent. Book 1's thing, where he was an analyst and in-house technical guy who got pulled into the field during an emergency was believable, and I like how his dreams of becoming a cool, suave field guy were crushed the moment he did a real field assignment. But by the third book when he's been fast-tracked for management he's been read in to a tremendous number of highly-sensitive classified cases, his head is a treasure trove of computer demonology, and he has a really wide range of esoteric technical skills, experience working the system, and a proven track record as a reliable guy who can work under pressure. So it makes no sense to me that Angleton keeps using him as bait or as a kite/cuteaway in field ops. Bob is the guy who you lock in a basement several stories underground, not someone you send to shoot dudes or dangle in front of enemy operatives like a cat toy. Structurally it's all good, because it's fun to watch Bob get into deep trouble and fight/magic/run his way out of it, but given how much attention was put into painting the Laundry as a boring and tedious civil service job it seems a little weird when all the managers and analysts also turn out to be badass action heroes. I think Mo was the worst- she's probably my favorite character in the books, but it seems like a kind of weird choice to take a former professor with a PhD in Weird poo poo and make them a frontline wetwork operative.
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Jul 25, 2019 19:05
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It may not be 100% clear by book 3 but there is a reason they are fast tracking everyone they can regardless of risk. The ones who survive are badasses because the inept die quick. Like the one guy who gets brained in the first book.
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Jul 25, 2019 19:30
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Yeah there is a *reason* they are trying to give everyone vaguely competent field and management experience. The other thing is Angleton is who what he is and Bob is basically his apprentice. As for Moe that again is a function of her ah, unique, bond with her instrument.
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Jul 25, 2019 20:03
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Yeah, I think it works in retrospect, but it's still something that felt off to me especially early on. [spoiler]Speaking of the instrument, was it established somewhere how that all got started? As far as I can recall she was a normal professor dude in book 1, and she just popped into book 2 with a violin that makes people's heads explode.[spoiler]
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Jul 25, 2019 21:37
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, I think it works in retrospect, but it's still something that felt off to me especially early on. Moe gets explained more down the line but it amounts to "she is dealing with her own poo poo offscreen"
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Jul 25, 2019 21:57
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Omi no Kami posted:So wait, I just finished the third Laundry Files book (you guys were right, it was way better than #2), and how did Bob survive the ending? After the ritual recursively bound his soul to his own body, wasn't he essentially just a disembodied consciousness puppeteering a corpse with a swiss-cheese brain? Did Angleton just magically fix him after they were disentangled or something? Goddamnit I'm having to bite my tongue to keep from spoiling this because it's loving brilliant.
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Jul 26, 2019 08:34
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One of the important things to remember is that the books are supposed to be reports that the POV character has written for the Auditors - Bob lies in his reports, and the amount he lies goes up as the series progresses. Critically, the more weird poo poo he sees, the more careful he is to appear to be a regular human in the reports, and there are points where you can see what actually happened if you read between the lines.
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Jul 26, 2019 16:07
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Hmm, don't tell me if I'm right or wrong, but just starting book #5 I'm genuinely clueless on what could be going on and interested to find out. I have some dumb conspiracy theories, but without knowing that 3's ending makes sense I probably would've straight-up assumed it was awkward writing and not realized anything was amiss. So, in no particular order: My best guess is that Bob and Angleton are sharing a body- it doesn't make much sense, especially since Bob is pretty paranoid about destiny entanglements and I doubt they'd want Angleton exposed in the field. I guess the ending to #4 kinda blows a hole in that too, since Angleton meets with Black Chamber while Bob's in the middle of the communications blackout. Maybe Bob is still a spirit possessing a corpse, and either doesn't know it, or willfully hides the glowing neon worm eyes? I don't really like this either... I doubt the Laundry would let him get away with that, and unless he's super-big mega-ultra lying, we've seen him interact with tons of mundane people since #3 without causing problems. The Laundry turned him into some kind of living weapon in the wake of the failed summoning? I don't really buy this, the only reason I'm thinking along those lines is because the auditors apparently have backdoors installed in Bob's brain, and "We were just making sure the black chamber didn't rootkit you" seems like a great cover story if you need to check the integrity of his brain-body tether and can't keep him from noticing you do it. They attached Bob's mind to Mo's violin? (I have literally zero evidence for this, but it's really funny.)
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Jul 26, 2019 18:55
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And here I was thinking all the exposition in the Laundry files left very little mystery to what was going on.
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Jul 27, 2019 01:18
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biracial bear for uncut posted:And here I was thinking all the exposition in the Laundry files left very little mystery to what was going on. There is very little mystery as to what was going on.
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Jul 27, 2019 01:46
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You guys ever watched the Alex Verus movie https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435705/
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Jul 27, 2019 05:24
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Daric posted:You guys ever watched the Alex Verus movie https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435705/
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Jul 27, 2019 11:49
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Someone should Ask Luna what Alex thinks of the movie.
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Jul 27, 2019 16:51
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smertrioslol posted:There is very little mystery as to what was going on. I didn’t pick up on anything between the lines. Can you guys try explaining some of it?
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Jul 27, 2019 18:50
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Fallom posted:I didn’t pick up on anything between the lines. Can you guys try explaining some of it? Yeah, I was/am expecting some kind of holy-cow reveal, but I've gotten as far as the book where Mo runs around yelling at superheroes and having Twilight dreams about the sparkly vampire that is her murderous violin, and it seems like Bob is just kinda "Ehh, Angleton did some magic and I came back a bit wrong, also I have Angleton's abilities"?
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Jul 27, 2019 20:11
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This is a serious spoiler for some regarding Bob if you haven't figured it out. Bob is basically superimposed with the Eater of Souls after the cult tried to eject his soul and Anlgeton "died". So he's in the singular position of possessing his own body. This is why Mo's violin kept trying to force her to destroy him.
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Jul 27, 2019 22:01
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Hmm, I kinda-sorta assumed that already? Like, I'm still fuzzy on the details, but it felt like the books took it for granted that Bob was Eater 1.5 after his wacky cannibal adventure, and upgraded to the full package after Angleton died. I know there was that thing in The Annihilation Score where Mo wakes up and sees a feeder thing that she thinks is trying to possess him- I guess the implication is that Bob's been dead since #3, and is still explicitly 2-ish intertwined entities possessing a corpse?
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Jul 27, 2019 23:38
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From reading Stross’s blog, it’s more like: Angleton, Eater of Souls is an extra dimensional horror summoned, then brought up in a life of British privilege and emulates the attitudes of the schoolmasters he was around. Bob, on the other hand, died in the botched summoning and either reinhabited his body or, alternatively is now the Eater of Souls, emulating the nerdy IT guy whose soul he consumed and whose body he now inhabits.
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Jul 27, 2019 23:58
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Proteus Jones posted:This is a serious spoiler for some regarding Bob if you haven't figured it out. Oh, I think I recall the book explicitly saying that so I thought I was missing something more subtle. Bob actually being completely dead and not merged with the Eater of Souls who is now inhabiting his body is an idea I hadn't thought of, though. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jul 28, 2019 |
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Jul 28, 2019 00:22
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Velius posted:From reading Stross’s blog, it’s more like: Angleton, Eater of Souls is an extra dimensional horror summoned, then brought up in a life of British privilege and emulates the attitudes of the schoolmasters he was around. #2 would be a legit neat twist, but how does that square with Angleton still being alive in a body with a visibly distinct cognitive stream from Bob the Elder IT One until he got vampired? Was the Eater straddling two meatsuits or something? ...actually, that sounds really cool, if it was one entity either of unaware or apathetic to the fact that it had two bodies, which was playing both halves of a strict mentor/unhappy underling power couple.
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Jul 28, 2019 00:24
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I always took it that the dangling pointer picked up another separate eater of souls. This one just happened to inhabit a Bob-shaped brain, so it's very convinced it's still Robert Oliver Francis Howard, but it is definitely not. The reason why he seems to share a "package" of abilities with Angleton is that our reality is only big enough for one eater at a time to manifest, so the two are having to share one space.
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Jul 28, 2019 02:13
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Omi no Kami posted:#2 would be a legit neat twist, but how does that square with Angleton still being alive in a body with a visibly distinct cognitive stream from Bob the Elder IT One until he got vampired? Was the Eater straddling two meatsuits or something? Bob is destiny entangled with the Eater of Souls, not actually possessed by it. When Angleton 'dies' the destiny entanglement remains.
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Jul 28, 2019 02:41
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Khizan posted:Bob is destiny entangled with the Eater of Souls, not actually possessed by it. When Angleton 'dies' the destiny entanglement remains. This seems the closest explanation to me, especially considering the lengths book two went to Introduce the concept. I kinda wanna re read the scene now in book 3.
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Jul 28, 2019 04:59
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Khizan posted:Bob is destiny entangled with the Eater of Souls, not actually possessed by it. When Angleton 'dies' the destiny entanglement remains. Okay, that's kind of cool, the fact that the host dying doesn't kill the eater of souls hadn't occurred to me... it also explains why like half of book 2 was about destiny entanglement, even though that had absolutely nothing to do with the plot beyond "Here's a clever idea (that failed immediately)." Edit: Still on Laundry Files, is The Nightmare Stacks skippable? I went to wiki to find the next one's name, and apparently it's from the viewpoint of the idiot stockbroker vampire, and uses elves to awkwardly discuss British immigration policy? That sounds godawful; Bob and Mo and weird eldritch nonsense is awesome, but every time he does vampires, superheroes, ian flemming, or really anything outside of the core setup my interest flags fast. Omi no Kami fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Jul 29, 2019 |
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Jul 28, 2019 18:13
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Eh. It's not as bad as it sounds, IMO. You should at least try it. I rather liked it. The vampire guy is almost a reversion to early Bob, with the whole "nerdy junior wizard out of his depth" thing. Here's a spoiler-tastic summary of it from what I can remember if you want to skip it, but I do think it is worth reading. The Nightmare Stacks is about CASE NIGHTMARE RED, which is an invasion by hostile alien/extradimensional force. The invaders in this case are elves. The elves are the last survivors from their world, which was overrun by Great Old Ones in a situation similar to the Laundry's CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, and they're a relatively small military force from some backwater outpost. Elvish society is super regimented with every underling being geas-bound to their superior. So a soldier is bound to a sergeant who is bound to a lieutenant who is bound to a superior officer and so forth right up until the Empress herself. With the collapse of their Empire, the new effective Emperor is the commanding officer of this backwater outpost. The invasion starts when the elves send a spy to plan out their assault. Spy is the daughter of the elven leader and the elven chief spy, and that makes her something like the #3 ranking member of the hierarchy. Spy meets Vampire and immediately recognizes what he is, and starts to associate with him because she knows that vampires are most often powerful magi and she assumes that he has a position of power that will make him a useful source of information. Spy gets to know him and Earth and decides she likes it better than being geas-bound to her father and stepmother. When the invasion actually takes place, it's magic versus the British Army and the Brits get fuckin' wrecked in a very public fashion. Dragons versus fighter planes, basilisks versus tanks, cavalry versus tanks, etc. It ends when Spy and Vampire manage to call in an airstrike on the elven leaders. This makes Spy the leader of the elves. Since they're all geas-bound to her now, she stands them down. Then to give them some official status Vampire has them apply for asylum as refugees from a war, with that war being the one they lost to the Great Old Ones on their world. The end result is that the entire loving world knows about this because the elves shot down passenger planes and generally made a huge loving mess, and the Laundry takes a massive loving credibility hit and comes to the attention of the Government because of the damage the elves caused, even though there was no practical way to prevent any of it. This sets up the next book. Vampire and Spy remain central characters afterwards.
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Jul 29, 2019 05:45
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Hmm that sounds pretty neat, I'll at least give it a whirl- thanks for the summary! All in all the series has been pretty fun, but I just wish it was a little more consistent- it feels like the author wants to do homages to a whole range of spy fiction (and later fantasy in general), and that's fine, but my favorite books by far were probably 1, 3, and 4, where he stuck to nerds doing weird programmer cthulhu stuff in a soul-crushing bureaucracy.
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Jul 29, 2019 06:24
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That stuffs largely over and not coming back in all likelihood. The one after the Elven invasion is where poo poo gets real around CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN and marks the beginning of the end. The various protagonists are only marginally human by this point and the old ones are definitely back.
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Jul 29, 2019 07:41
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Omi no Kami posted:Hmm that sounds pretty neat, I'll at least give it a whirl- thanks for the summary! Look the whole point of the series is summed up when Bob explains how he and Mo aren’t going to have kids. And when he explains that his God is coming and that he will be waiting..with a shotgun..and he’s saving the last round for himself. All you gotta know about the Laundry.
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Jul 29, 2019 07:44
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navyjack posted:Look the whole point of the series is summed up when Bob explains how he and Mo aren’t going to have kids. And when he explains that his God is coming and that he will be waiting..with a shotgun..and he’s saving the last round for himself. All you gotta know about the Laundry. Yeah, that stuff is great- this is way more a problem with this specific reader than it is with the books, but it feels like only around 60-70% of the total stuff is actually about the elder ones and the oncoming apocalypse- like, he could've cut the vampire and superhero books almost completely. They still got interesting things done (vampires gave us former psycho-ex, now psycho pretty good executive assistant, superheroes gave us the background on the violin), but I wish they could've done that in a more tonally and thematically consistent way.
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Jul 29, 2019 15:32
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, that stuff is great- this is way more a problem with this specific reader than it is with the books, but it feels like only around 60-70% of the total stuff is actually about the elder ones and the oncoming apocalypse- like, he could've cut the vampire and superhero books almost completely. They still got interesting things done (vampires gave us former psycho-ex, now psycho pretty good executive assistant, superheroes gave us the background on the violin), but I wish they could've done that in a more tonally and thematically consistent way. Oh yeah I hated the superhero book, like almost stopped reading over it hated it
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Jul 30, 2019 07:50
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Have any of you read Red Right Hand? Seems interesting but I've not heard about it here. Been audiobooking back through Alex Verus but looking for an actual book for the reading times.
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Jul 30, 2019 19:12
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Dreqqus posted:Have any of you read Red Right Hand? Seems interesting but I've not heard about it here. Been audiobooking back through Alex Verus but looking for an actual book for the reading times. I bought it when it came out, but bounced off it after a couple chapters. I'm not sure why since, as a huge Cthulhu Mythos fan, it's exactly the kind of story I'd like. I had forgotten I had it. I might give it another go and see if I have the same reaction.
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Jul 30, 2019 20:01
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I'm on Blood Rites on my reread. These books were good but looking at them now, having read the other stuff in the genre, Harry's melodrama about women is very heavy handed. Still good books though.
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Jul 31, 2019 01:01
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Daric posted:I'm on Blood Rites on my reread. These books were good but looking at them now, having read the other stuff in the genre, Harry's melodrama about women is very heavy handed. Still good books though. Yeah, I skipped Blood Rites on this re-read. I know it has important plot points with Harry's mother and Thomas, and how the White Court ends up, but I just didn't want to deal with the White Court shenanigans, and knowing Dead Beat was waiting right there was too much of a temptation.
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Jul 31, 2019 15:13
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thrawn527 posted:Yeah, I skipped Blood Rites on this re-read. I know it has important plot points with Harry's mother and Thomas, and how the White Court ends up, but I just didn't want to deal with the White Court shenanigans, and knowing Dead Beat was waiting right there was too much of a temptation. Blood Rites has the frozen turkey missile, which is literally the most on-brand Harry Dresden moment in any of the Dresden Files. But yeah, last time I read it I read to there and then skipped to the next book.
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Jul 31, 2019 15:21
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Daniel Faust - Double or nothing Is that Grey Fox who I think it is?
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Jul 31, 2019 15:34
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tithin posted:Daniel Faust - Double or nothing The silver fox? Yeah, has to be.
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Jul 31, 2019 17:20
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I always though Harry getting out of a police investigation due to a villain forgetting his name to be kinda funny.
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Jul 31, 2019 17:34
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