⇒ Libro The Rhesus Chart A Laundry Files Novel The Laundry Files Charles Stross 9780356502533 Books

The Rhesus Chart A Laundry Files Novel The Laundry Files Charles Stross 9780356502533 Books

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The Rhesus Chart A Laundry Files Novel The Laundry Files Charles Stross 9780356502533 Books

Three and a half stars. I was dead set on three, but with the last fifty pages, I bumped it up to four.

If you're a Laundry fan you'll want to read this one for the overall series story arc. There are developments between Bob & Mo and in Bob's career track that you'll need to know.

From what I see of the other reviews, I wasn't the only one to find that plot points already established in this book, as well as character and series background, were repeated more than once within this book. I get that Stross has to tell new readers about the Laundry and Bob from one book to the next. However, repeating that info within the same book is annoying and possibly word count filler. I think that the editor should've brought that to Stross's attention.

I didn't get the sudden change in the relationship between Oscar and Mhari. It went from hot and steamy in the forefront of the manuscript to non-existent and invisible. Did I miss something?

I, too, found that too much of the book plodded along. After the initial action segment to get readers hooked, the story settled down for a nap. Explaining how vampires fit into the Laundry-verse didn't provide much spark, and the committee meetings to fit PHANGs (the PC name for them) into the organization should've been an opportunity for humor, instead we suffered as much as Bob did attending them. I'd say the story didn't get going again until the final fifty pages.

And then Stross killed off my favorite character in the series! I'm hoping that he's just trapped on the other side of the event horizon in the conference room, waiting to reappear when he's absolutely necessary. I certainly hope so. I wasn't ready for him to just disappear. His demise needed to be epic, not written off in a bureaucratic report.

Despite my complaints, I still liked the book. I like the characters and their struggles with bureaucracy, relationships, and things that should not be. Stross does these things well.

Putting this with The Apocalypse Codex, I'm starting to worry that the five-star "magic" in the series is fizzling. Maybe Stross should've written shorter versions of the two and combined them into one book, like he did with The Atrocity Archives (which contained The Atrocity Archive and The Concrete Jungle)


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The Rhesus Chart A Laundry Files Novel The Laundry Files Charles Stross 9780356502533 Books Reviews

Stross gives us another episode of HM Really Secret Service or (HM Occult Service). This time there are vampires, or in the official acronym PHANGs. Except getting bitten by them gives you Mad Cow Disease. Oh, and one of them was once Bob Howard's Girlfriend from Hell. We watch as Bob deals with the intelligence bureaucracy on the one hand, the problems of marriage on the other, and working for an intelligence service that deals with eldritch horrors on the third hand. He probably wishes he had three hands to deal with the paperwork.

If there is a category for this novel it ought to be darkly humourous (and more dark, I have to say, than humourous) contemporary urban fantasy. This is a subgenre of which Stross is undoubtedly a master, and I look forward to more.
Bob Howard continues to climb the corporate ladder in this latest tale of the Laundry. Bob is investigating the deaths of some people who appear to have a mad-cow disease-like infestation in their brains. Along the way, he discovers an infestation of PHANGS; not really vampires (because everyone knows vampires don't exist) but with a lot of the same classic manifestations, such as blood lust, super-strength, and the required heavy use of sunscreen. Similar to Bob's use of logic and technology to defeat various bad things, it seems that some higher forms of math can attract trouble also, and the PHANGS are part of it. In this case, some real vampires (or are they?) are having a turf war and using the Laundry and the PHANGS to create an uneven playing field to kill each other and to destroy the Laundry itself. On the side, Bob's relationship with Mo and her evil fiddle is also deteriorating, leading to a little mind wandering on Bob's part, which doesn't help things at all. While not quite up to the excellence of earlier books (especially the preceding Apocalypse Codex), this one is still a good tale, and Bob, of course, manages to pull through at the end and get yet another "promotion." Just watch out for the fiddle, Bob.
'The Rhesus Chart' doesn't quite live up to the (admittedly high) bar set by the earlier books in the Laundry Files series, I'm afraid. It's still good-- Charles Stross doesn't seem to write bad books, or even mediocre ones-- but his opting to write a vampire novel felt more like he was jumping on a bloated and overworked bandwagon than writing a Laundry Files novel. Sure, he had some new takes on vampirism... but so have hard-a-dozen indie writers selling 99 cent books on . He writes better than they do, but usually he is better at avoiding clichés. I mean, his usual "bad guys" have been the subjects of H.P. Lovecraft's post-pepperoni nightmares, and now he's writing about vampires?

[Spoiler Alert!] I had a second issue with this edition of the Laundry Files I don't like it when I find that I am smarter than not just the protagonist but also everyone he works for and with. Bob Howard figured out that someone who has been in the organization for multiple decades was in fact a vampire who had been planting false information to protect himself for all that time. Now, the smart thing to do would be to ensure that the folks involved in the mole hunt were all to young to fit that profile, right? Okay, maybe he couldn't keep the Auditors or Angleton out, but as soon as ancient Basil from Records was put on the committee (the only committee he had been on in yes, decades), I knew the identity of the bad guy. From that point on, it was just a matter of seeing how it played out-- the mystery was gone. That was, for Stross, sloppy writing. [End of Spoilers]

Even so, bad Stross remains better than mediocre other people, so if I can't quite recommend this book, I'll still recommend the series, and keep on reading them myself.
Three and a half stars. I was dead set on three, but with the last fifty pages, I bumped it up to four.

If you're a Laundry fan you'll want to read this one for the overall series story arc. There are developments between Bob & Mo and in Bob's career track that you'll need to know.

From what I see of the other reviews, I wasn't the only one to find that plot points already established in this book, as well as character and series background, were repeated more than once within this book. I get that Stross has to tell new readers about the Laundry and Bob from one book to the next. However, repeating that info within the same book is annoying and possibly word count filler. I think that the editor should've brought that to Stross's attention.

I didn't get the sudden change in the relationship between Oscar and Mhari. It went from hot and steamy in the forefront of the manuscript to non-existent and invisible. Did I miss something?

I, too, found that too much of the book plodded along. After the initial action segment to get readers hooked, the story settled down for a nap. Explaining how vampires fit into the Laundry-verse didn't provide much spark, and the committee meetings to fit PHANGs (the PC name for them) into the organization should've been an opportunity for humor, instead we suffered as much as Bob did attending them. I'd say the story didn't get going again until the final fifty pages.

And then Stross killed off my favorite character in the series! I'm hoping that he's just trapped on the other side of the event horizon in the conference room, waiting to reappear when he's absolutely necessary. I certainly hope so. I wasn't ready for him to just disappear. His demise needed to be epic, not written off in a bureaucratic report.

Despite my complaints, I still liked the book. I like the characters and their struggles with bureaucracy, relationships, and things that should not be. Stross does these things well.

Putting this with The Apocalypse Codex, I'm starting to worry that the five-star "magic" in the series is fizzling. Maybe Stross should've written shorter versions of the two and combined them into one book, like he did with The Atrocity Archives (which contained The Atrocity Archive and The Concrete Jungle)