The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files Series #8)

by Charles Stross

Overview

*2018 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FANTASY NOVEL CATEGORY*

“Smart, literate, funny.” —Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians

Someone is dead set to air the spy agency’s dirty laundry in The Delirium Brief, the next installment to Charles Stross’ Hugo Award-winning comedic dark fantasy Laundry Files series!

Bob Howard’s career in the Laundry, the secret British government agency dedicated to protecting the world from unspeakable horrors from beyond spacetime, has entailed high combat, brilliant hacking, ancient magic, and combat with indescribably repellent creatures of pure evil. It has also involved a wearying amount of paperwork and office politics, and his expense reports are still a mess.

Now, following the invasion of Yorkshire by the Host of Air and Darkness, the Laundry’s existence has become public, and Bob is being trotted out on TV to answer pointed questions about elven asylum seekers. What neither Bob nor his managers have foreseen is that their organization has earned the attention of a horror far more terrifying than any demon: a British government looking for public services to privatize.

Inch by inch, Bob Howard and his managers are forced to consider the truly unthinkable: a coup against the British government itself.

Laundry Files
1. The Atrocity Archives
2. The Jennifer Morgue
3. The Fuller Memorandum
4. The Apocalypse Codex
5. The Rhesus Chart
6. The Annihilation Score
7. The Nightmare Stacks

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250196095
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/05/2018
Series:	Laundry Files Series , #8
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	362,247
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

CHARLES STROSS is a British SF writer, born in Leeds, England, and living in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has worked as a tech writer, a programmer, a journalist, and a pharmacist; he holds degrees in pharmacy and in computer science. He has won three Hugo Awards for his short fiction, including in 2014 for Equoid, a Laundry Files novella originally published on Tor.com.

Editorial Reviews

Stross still spins a heck of a yarn.” —Kirkus Reviews on The Delirium Brief

"Gaudy and gory....This is Stross in one of his darker moods....The political side of the book...signals some of the real-world anxieties that stand behind the entire series." —Locus on The Delirium Brief

“A fast-paced blend of espionage thrills, mundane office comedy and Lovecraftian horror.” —SFX on The Rhesus Chart

“Alternately chilling and hilarious.” —Publishers Weekly on The Jennifer Morgue

“Combines a le Carré-style espionage thriller with Lovecraftian horror to great effect.” —The Guardian on The Fuller Memorandum

“Smart, literate, funny.”—Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians

“A bizarre yet effective yoking of the spy and horror genres.”—The Washington Post Book World

“Imagine a world where gnarly Lovecraftian demons are all too real yet are routinely neutralized with high-tech wizardry by a supersecret British spy agency, and you'll get an inkling of the genre-bending territory Stross explores in his Laundry Files novels.” —Booklist on The Fuller Memorandum

From the Publisher

07/01/2017
The Laundry, Britain's agency for policing all things supernatural, has already had a rough year after the near-catastrophe of an elven invasion in The Nightmare Stacks. Led by a charismatic evangelical preacher named Raymond Schiller, a rogue group that has already toppled their sister agency in America decides the time is ripe to take over the Laundry as well. Laundry employees are quickly sacked, and a new contractor is scheduled to take over operations. But when your operations involve protecting the UK from vampires, elven mages, and other eldritch horrors, a pink slip is not going to suffice. Bob Howard, once a lowly computer tech and now a powerful member of the Laundry's inner circle, is at the center of the efforts to find out what Schiller has in mind and how to protect the agency's assets. There's plenty of humor, action galore, and enough fantastical sf horror to keep things delightfully weird. While this isn't the easiest entry point, Stross does a good job of catching up new readers. VERDICT Those who enjoyed the combination of bureaucracy and espionage of Daniel O'Malley's The Rook should give this series a try.—MM

Library Journal

2017-05-02
Stross' Laundry Files series, of which this is No. 8 (The Nightmare Stacks, 2016, etc.), is a weird but effective mashup of Lovecraft-ian horror, espionage thriller, science fiction, and satire, centering around a top-secret British government agency devoted to fighting "the sort of thing you expect to meet in an episode of The X-Files."In resolving the previous book's crisis, unfortunately, the Laundry's existence becomes public knowledge, so this time out combat sorcerer Bob Howard, the Eater of Souls, must appear on TV to offer the usual blandishments. Poor Bob and his equally scary wife, the newly minted auditor, Mo O'Brien, can't live together—her demonic White Violin tried to eat him, while Bob worries that he might absentmindedly eat Mo's soul while sleepwalking. As a senior member of staff, though, Bob no longer has to worry about his expense sheets. But an evil god from another dimension is moving to take over the American government, whose about-to-be-unemployed good guys warn the Laundry that the Rev. Raymond Schiller, whose followers are deliberately parasitized and enslaved by a godlike extradimensional horror known as the Sleeper in the Pyramid, is plotting a takeover of the U.K. government. Abruptly, the Laundry's staffers learn that their agency has been privatized and they're all out of a job. To combat Schiller, Bob will need his most powerful allies, freelance witch Persephone "Seph" Hazard, otherworld elf-queen Cassie Brewer, and Senior Auditor Armstrong. Series regulars will find the usual humor here much reduced, with a narrative cluttered with infodumps on civil service bureaucracy, while the tone has turned bleaker and far darker. There's little need to point out the obvious political aspects to all this. Some readers may not relish the new direction the series is taking, while others will ponder the underlying currents and conclude that it all makes perfect sense. Stross still spins a heck of a yarn.

Kirkus Reviews