I have only read a couple of the laundry files books but, luckily, one of the earlier ones I read had Eve and her brother as the main characters. It was good to revisit them and the eldritch world the author has constructed. I had fun following Eve on her crazy trip to a regency era pocket universe on the dream roads. The ending felt a little disjointed and sudden to me, but the journey was a blast.

Charles Stross introduces the reader to Season of Skulls from the universe of the Laundry Files. The Prime Minister is an ancient god of unspeakable power in the twenty first century. Eve Starkey hyper organized CEO had defeated her boss and husband but somehow he survived on the dream roads and held power as a traditional over all her activities and possessions. Now she has to find and defeat him on the dream roads and bring his true head to the Prime Minister. Inventive use of time travel and alternate realities. Great dark fantasy.

Easily the worst of Stross's Laundry Files novels, but really this book has nothing to do with the Laundry Files series starring Bob Howard, and a tenuous, at best, connection to its world. I know the author has considered these New Management books, of which this is the last of the trilogy, to be a spinoff of the larger series, but I have found each one to be increasingly difficult to read and quite frankly boring. This story seems to be an attempt by the author to try his hand at writing romance and it fails miserably. And I'm not sure what the extended The Prisoner (classic British TV series) style sequence is for or even why it is there. Hopefully we will see a return to the original Bob Howard series, but I will be looking extremely closely and skeptically at any future release from the author claiming to be a new Laundry Files novel.

For twenty years Charles Stross has been writing about The Laundry Files which mixes classic spy tales with Lovecraftian horror. The first introduced the Laundry British spy agency and mixed Len Dighton’s The Ipcress File with Lovecraft for a fun walk throughThe Atrocity Archives (paper). The agency was trying to keep the eldritch horrors out of our world and they failed.Eve Starkey thought her boss, super villain, and technically husband, dead. Then he appears, a walking dead, grabbed something from his safe and disappears through the dreaming roads to the past.In 1816 (the year without a summer) she is held in the village, a place modeled after the 1960’s tv show , The prisoner where she meets Dr.Frankenstein and has Regency Romance adventures. Season of Skulls (hard fromTordotcom) is a hoot and a must for fans of the series.

Brilliant to be back in the laundryverse. This episode came with all the swagger, humour and tangled threads of story that we’ve come to expect, all somehow miraculously twisting into a brilliantly structured story. Utterly compelling from beginning to end. Highly recommend this entire series.

Enjoyable Laundry title. Style in keeping with others in series. Fits in with rest of trilogy. Recommended.book.and series.

Season of Skulls (Laundry Files, #13; New Management, #3)
Season of Skulls by Charles Stross
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well now, after reading the acknowledgements, I have a much better appreciation for the genesis of this novel. I mean, yes, it's absolutely a Laundry novel and it's the third and perhaps capstone of the New Management trilogy, but it's also a point of challenge and departure for Charlie Stross.

I SO want to spoil it, to tell ya'll what he's turned his hand toward, but I won't. Just know that I think it got pulled off quite well. I was grinning from ear to ear by the time we got there.

Nanowrimo helps, ya'll. Even seasoned authors. Plus, '20 sucked. I'm so glad we got something good out of it here.

It's LAUNDRY, people! I always get excited with these, and thanks to the machinations of Management, a few tentacles, a demi-liche, nasty story geases, and a bit of dream and time-travel, bureaucracy has never seemed so welcoming.

Eve Starkey has a problem. She has been tasked with bringing to the New Management the proper head of Rupert Bigge. Unfortunately, the head found on Skaros will not do. Then Rupert Bigge returns from the dream roads and tasks her with specific instructions. before he dives back into the past again. Eve takes a huge risk and follows him down the dram roads to 1816 England where is finds herself entangled in a battle between the Invisible College and several other factions supporting the Mute Poet. She needs to figure out what is going on, recruit allies, summon reinforcements, and figure out a way to thwart the geas Rupurt has inflicted on her. Stross has fun playing with sci-fi, Regency Gothic romance, and horror tropes in this mad dash through a timescape that may or not affect the future. An interesting addition to the Laundry series.

Thanks Netgalley for the opportunity to read this title.

If you haven't started reading the Laundry Files, go read it now. The series about eldritch horrors contained by bureaucracy has evolved into some of the best political and social commentary available, skewering everything from superheroes to spies while pulsing with fury at capitalism and the bullshit and misery of the lives of most people. In Season of Skulls, the third of the Tales of the New Management series, the Black Pharaoh has settled into his rule over Britain, setting up his own legal system (brutal) and holding balls (terrifying). Eve Starkey is trying to avoid His notice while finding a way to ensure that she is free from her evil ex-boss/ husband she was unwittingly sold to, until His Dread Majesty sets her a task - find the body of Rupert De Montfort Bigge and return it from the past to the present. Eve must use the dreamroads to go to 1816 and try to survive life as a Jane Austen heroine without falling prey to the traps and nightmares that abound. An excellent deconstruction of Regency romance tropes - riding in a stagecoach sucks, highwaymen are more monstrous than dashing, the food is terrible, and life without respected agency is just slavery by another name - while progressing the story of the battle of the eldritch horrors. A must-read for fans of the series, and one of my favorites so far.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.