Review: The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9)

The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a great exploration of the world after the shocking events from the previous book. Nyarlathotep is in charge - now what? The plot seems fun, and a good way to up the ante. And although the previous book was a good sort-of-conclusion to the story of the main characters, this book is the one to actually have the Laundry face its greatest enemy, alluded to from the very first book, the sleeper ((view spoiler)[Cthulhu (hide spoiler)]). It's a good plot, going back to the first two books, and a more technical sort of spy book, with the protagonists going into a secret-agent type of mission, but dealing with a lot of the bureaucracy, setup, and technicalities. You can tell there was a lot of research going into it. I really like that, since that's what made me like this series to begin with. It had a lot of non-linear story-telling, with flashbacks and pauses for technical explanations. It also had lots of high political intrigue, which is quite new to the series. Finally, there is a lot of action, of the more conventional type with guns and shootouts (it takes place in the US!), also in contrast to the previous books. In particular, the ending was very action-filled, with lots of cool stuff happening. It was very satisfying!

One thing I didn't like was the choice of characters. I would have preferred a book following the main protagonists, Bob and Mo, but they are not really present here. It's too bad, since it looks like this will be the last book following the main storyline for a while (the author switched to writing about secondary stories, "side quests", happening in the new world). So instead of Bob and Mo, or even Alex the vampire, we got pretty much all the other side characters thrown together in a single mission, for no apparent reason other than they are the ones we are familiar with and are still alive. It was weird selection, with all new interpretations of the characters. Some of them are good, some of them seem forced and completely out of place, so it's a mixed bag of characters and characterization.


View all my reviews