The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files #2), by Charles Stross

  Pivoting from the Lovecraftian to James Bond, The Jennifer Morgue, second installment in the Laundry Files series, was... boring. A lot of self absorbed interest in the bureaucratic minutiae of government agencies, a lot of technobabble that did not forward the plot, some weird interpersonal scenarios that humans would never go with. It felt like a Tolkien possessed computer programmer trying to reinvent Fleming.

  There is a gap between my general perception of Charles Stross and what I felt reading his stuff. Since Accelerando, which I've read a looong time ago and barely remember, I've always had the impression that Stross is a great writer with amazing ideas. However I've looked at my ratings and reviews for his books and the vast majority of them were average. The evidence forces me to downgrade him as an author.

  The problem with this book is that it's not as funny or intelligent as it seems to believe itself to be. The snarky protagonist being the dunce gets old fast and the obvious twists at the end are telegraphed chapters before. There are no real characters in the story, either, just roles, which makes some sense in the context, but it's also because the writing is mediocre. Most of the action and behavior of characters twist uncomfortably to fit the narrative that Stross forced upon the book. So, great job, it's not Saturn's Children - that starts one way and ends another, it's not Accelerando - a patchwork book made of separate stories blended together, yet it feels worse, it feels fake.

  And it's a long book, too. The decision to slap a short story on to this book plus a long dissertation on the history of Ian Fleming and James Bond did not help with that.

  Bottom line: clearly not my style of a book. I enjoyed the first one in the series, but I am sure I don't want to continue with The Laundry Files and perhaps not anything else from Charles Stross, as much as it pains me to admit it.