Laundry Novels
Oct. 18th, 2017 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackSpoilers. Ok, now padding for a paragraph, rhubarb, rhubarb lorem ipsum rhubarb etc.
Jesus hits an iceberg and all the Capulets and Montagues war forever.
OK, where was I.
I read some of the comment threads on Stross' blog. Wow, Charlie finds it hard to play coy. "I'm not saying X is going to happen, but when Bob said X couldn't possibly happen, he was wrong." But um yes, what he said was going to happen was a shock even when I knew everything that had happened so far.
I'm still frustrated, the first book was all about computation demonology, but all the others quickly start to being about *bypassing* it.
I love all the books, but they fit together roughly, and often seem like they're being too clever, being told from Bob's point of view and he's forcing the humour, which is realistic if he's dealing with lots of undealable-with things, but still intermittently annoying to read.
There's so much I do love. The characters, the ideas. The multi-book escalation and arc, which I think is handled imperfectly, but works as a whole better than most series I've seen.
I'm so confused. I think a lot of plot points got bent to fit, and others were foreshadowed in ways that didn't click for me at first. Now I can see a reasonable arc. First two books, fairly self contained adventures. Then we begin an arc of "one of the most accessible eldrich horrors is the Sleeper in the Pyramid, a natural target for anyone trying to do bad things to try to awake, and a major target for various containment events."
We also get a variety of Bob and Mo growing or changing substantially to fit, starting from Bob's increasing entanglement with Angleton's nature.
I only realised when I saw Charlie comment somewhere, that he actually planned the plot to *reach* the stars aligning the walls of reality thinning and earth coping with elder gods all over the place and keep going. I'd just assumed that would always be in the future. That explains some of the weird things, I assumed all the books would just be set in an eternal present, with Bob levelling up but the general background much the same. But a lot of the things make sense when you realise he's planning an actual arc for what happens when the books DO reach the conjunction and "keep the occult secret" isn't an option any more.
But other things stay ambiguous. The Black Pharoah and the Sleeper in the Pyramid are both lesser aspects of Nyarlathotep? But squabbling over something? Do any of the characters have any idea which horrors are which? Or are all the ties to lovecraft basically red herrings that represent a flawed understanding of cosmology? And some members of the cult of the black pharoah have a plan to survive the conjunction *somehow* even at great cost and by cooperating with some of the elder gods. But do they have a *specific* plan, or are they just guessing randomly, what they actually DO seems more like the "hasten apocalypse for no reason" plan the laundry thought they were working off? Which parts of this plan are elements of the laundry winking at? Which of these horrors are scared of which other horrors and which aren't? In several books, the Sleeper in the Pyramid is presented as (a) a fairly major antagonist, (b) tied to Nyarlathotep (c) sought to be awakened by the cult of the black pharoah, but that seems to contradict some things in the later books.
Some Deep Ones have weird occult ties, a la Innsmouth etc? But mostly they are more advanced than humanity but normally corporeal? And the same but more so for the Cthonian DEEP SEVENs? Do they have anything to say about the end of the world? Do they reckon they are immune to the sort of elder god imminently popping up, or don't know about it, or are making their own preparations, or something else? The infinite eater in the parallel universe in atrocity archives, that effectively ate an entire universe, so I'm guessing no-one can survive. But is Cthulhu etc less bad than that? Or as bad? Or is there an evacuation plan? We have gates -- are there are less-doomed universes humans could escape through, at least maybe a colony?
If things don't hold together enough, all the twists come out as "so? I've given up telling which things make sense and which don't".
Incidentally, I remember the james-bond-bit-part-esque field office chief in book #2 of questionable head-screwed-on-ness referring to the Americans as "the opposition", which makes a fuck of a lot more sense now we know more about the american occult agency.
The coming apocalypse is a *worldwide* threat. There are some friendly foreign occult agencies, but is there some shared planning here? For that matter, surely some people in the civilian government should have known something before it all came falling apart in the latest book.
Some things just feel un-fleshed-out. The early books describe a fairly large laundry, where you meet many people from many departments, etc, etc. But sometimes it feels like that's fallen away and the books are focusing on a core cast of "who we've already met".
The slow ramping up in influence, knowledge and seniority also has weird effects. We seem to transition abruptly from "the main characters have no idea who runs the laundry, how they're chosen, how they decide things, or what" to "the main characters are really quite senior, everyone who might be in charge is MIA, but orders keep materialising from... somewhere?"
Eta we know Persephone, but "Directors" judging from the only one ever shown seem to be fairly normal human retired operatives? Or they only seem like that after they stop doing ritual magic? Who in this mess of sorcerers and bureaucrats is in charge of saying "maybe senior members of government should have some protection against possession?"
Also, does anyone else find it impossible to remember what the titles refer to?
ETA:
Reading book #3. OK, I completely forgot some of the stuff from the end. They think the Russians were behind the violin-schema-theft. That would make sense.
Angleton is probably *not* bound, at least not inescapably.
Apparently the conjunction with elder gods is (bob thinks) bad for the eater of souls. When it's NOT bound into human form, is it HERE on earth? Or some other dimension? Or what? It seems too abstract to be eaten, but I guess its vulnerable to greater horrors, apparently?
We don't know how much Angleton "arranged" the eater of souls' connection to Bob, or how much other parties in the laundry connived to that end to maintain a link to the eater of souls if something happened to Angleton. Whether they planned the entire fiasco for that reason, or kept is a possible side-benefit or what.
And who is in on that kind of plot? No-one who featured in the novel, it seems. Surely that kind of thing would have to be really high level, especially given the other stuff it's connected with. Someone from Mahogany Row? Senior Auditors? Are the auditors running the review board still just enforcing the regular regulations or are they privy to some of the behind the scenes shenanigans?
And what did the cult leader know? Most of the cult seemed like idiots rather than fanatics. In her every day life she seemed pretty with it, and "survive the conjunction by cosying up to some less-bad elder god" at least makes some sort of sense, but she was super ready to just do evil stuff for no clear reason.
Jesus hits an iceberg and all the Capulets and Montagues war forever.
OK, where was I.
I read some of the comment threads on Stross' blog. Wow, Charlie finds it hard to play coy. "I'm not saying X is going to happen, but when Bob said X couldn't possibly happen, he was wrong." But um yes, what he said was going to happen was a shock even when I knew everything that had happened so far.
I'm still frustrated, the first book was all about computation demonology, but all the others quickly start to being about *bypassing* it.
I love all the books, but they fit together roughly, and often seem like they're being too clever, being told from Bob's point of view and he's forcing the humour, which is realistic if he's dealing with lots of undealable-with things, but still intermittently annoying to read.
There's so much I do love. The characters, the ideas. The multi-book escalation and arc, which I think is handled imperfectly, but works as a whole better than most series I've seen.
I'm so confused. I think a lot of plot points got bent to fit, and others were foreshadowed in ways that didn't click for me at first. Now I can see a reasonable arc. First two books, fairly self contained adventures. Then we begin an arc of "one of the most accessible eldrich horrors is the Sleeper in the Pyramid, a natural target for anyone trying to do bad things to try to awake, and a major target for various containment events."
We also get a variety of Bob and Mo growing or changing substantially to fit, starting from Bob's increasing entanglement with Angleton's nature.
I only realised when I saw Charlie comment somewhere, that he actually planned the plot to *reach* the stars aligning the walls of reality thinning and earth coping with elder gods all over the place and keep going. I'd just assumed that would always be in the future. That explains some of the weird things, I assumed all the books would just be set in an eternal present, with Bob levelling up but the general background much the same. But a lot of the things make sense when you realise he's planning an actual arc for what happens when the books DO reach the conjunction and "keep the occult secret" isn't an option any more.
But other things stay ambiguous. The Black Pharoah and the Sleeper in the Pyramid are both lesser aspects of Nyarlathotep? But squabbling over something? Do any of the characters have any idea which horrors are which? Or are all the ties to lovecraft basically red herrings that represent a flawed understanding of cosmology? And some members of the cult of the black pharoah have a plan to survive the conjunction *somehow* even at great cost and by cooperating with some of the elder gods. But do they have a *specific* plan, or are they just guessing randomly, what they actually DO seems more like the "hasten apocalypse for no reason" plan the laundry thought they were working off? Which parts of this plan are elements of the laundry winking at? Which of these horrors are scared of which other horrors and which aren't? In several books, the Sleeper in the Pyramid is presented as (a) a fairly major antagonist, (b) tied to Nyarlathotep (c) sought to be awakened by the cult of the black pharoah, but that seems to contradict some things in the later books.
Some Deep Ones have weird occult ties, a la Innsmouth etc? But mostly they are more advanced than humanity but normally corporeal? And the same but more so for the Cthonian DEEP SEVENs? Do they have anything to say about the end of the world? Do they reckon they are immune to the sort of elder god imminently popping up, or don't know about it, or are making their own preparations, or something else? The infinite eater in the parallel universe in atrocity archives, that effectively ate an entire universe, so I'm guessing no-one can survive. But is Cthulhu etc less bad than that? Or as bad? Or is there an evacuation plan? We have gates -- are there are less-doomed universes humans could escape through, at least maybe a colony?
If things don't hold together enough, all the twists come out as "so? I've given up telling which things make sense and which don't".
Incidentally, I remember the james-bond-bit-part-esque field office chief in book #2 of questionable head-screwed-on-ness referring to the Americans as "the opposition", which makes a fuck of a lot more sense now we know more about the american occult agency.
The coming apocalypse is a *worldwide* threat. There are some friendly foreign occult agencies, but is there some shared planning here? For that matter, surely some people in the civilian government should have known something before it all came falling apart in the latest book.
Some things just feel un-fleshed-out. The early books describe a fairly large laundry, where you meet many people from many departments, etc, etc. But sometimes it feels like that's fallen away and the books are focusing on a core cast of "who we've already met".
The slow ramping up in influence, knowledge and seniority also has weird effects. We seem to transition abruptly from "the main characters have no idea who runs the laundry, how they're chosen, how they decide things, or what" to "the main characters are really quite senior, everyone who might be in charge is MIA, but orders keep materialising from... somewhere?"
Eta we know Persephone, but "Directors" judging from the only one ever shown seem to be fairly normal human retired operatives? Or they only seem like that after they stop doing ritual magic? Who in this mess of sorcerers and bureaucrats is in charge of saying "maybe senior members of government should have some protection against possession?"
Also, does anyone else find it impossible to remember what the titles refer to?
ETA:
Reading book #3. OK, I completely forgot some of the stuff from the end. They think the Russians were behind the violin-schema-theft. That would make sense.
Angleton is probably *not* bound, at least not inescapably.
Apparently the conjunction with elder gods is (bob thinks) bad for the eater of souls. When it's NOT bound into human form, is it HERE on earth? Or some other dimension? Or what? It seems too abstract to be eaten, but I guess its vulnerable to greater horrors, apparently?
We don't know how much Angleton "arranged" the eater of souls' connection to Bob, or how much other parties in the laundry connived to that end to maintain a link to the eater of souls if something happened to Angleton. Whether they planned the entire fiasco for that reason, or kept is a possible side-benefit or what.
And who is in on that kind of plot? No-one who featured in the novel, it seems. Surely that kind of thing would have to be really high level, especially given the other stuff it's connected with. Someone from Mahogany Row? Senior Auditors? Are the auditors running the review board still just enforcing the regular regulations or are they privy to some of the behind the scenes shenanigans?
And what did the cult leader know? Most of the cult seemed like idiots rather than fanatics. In her every day life she seemed pretty with it, and "survive the conjunction by cosying up to some less-bad elder god" at least makes some sort of sense, but she was super ready to just do evil stuff for no clear reason.