Recent Reading - Jan 2022 2nd Edition

Dead Lies Dreaming - Charles Stross

This is the first in Stross''s new sub-series in his Laundry Files universe (the second is now out, so the first dropped to a price I'm prepared to pay).

It's Christmas and four Alfar warriors are crucifying a Santa on Regent Street - or in other words Case Nightmare Green is in effect and the stars haven't just come right, Nyar Lat Hotep is now PM, there's a skull rack decorating Marble Arch and the old judicial code, the one Hanging Judge Jeffries was so fond of, is back in effect. Which makes blaggng the day's pre-Christmas takings from Hamleys while dressed as the Joker, Batman, Robin and Princess Shuri somewhat risky, but it helps when you are a transhuman and really do have superpowers (courtesy of said stars coming right). Which is our introduction to the Lost Boys, Imp, who wants enough money to film a cyberpunk Peter Pan, Doc Despair, Becca the Deliverator and Game Boy, whose panic disorder is perhaps less than ideal for being part of Imp's plan, but whose physical timing is flawless.

Meanwhile Eve Starkey is deliberating on the alternative uses of kitchen utensils and stuck being sexually abused by her boss, billionaire hedge-fund owner Rupert Bigge, who I rapidly started picturing as Boris Johnson. While across town ex Detective Constable Wendy Deere is getting an unexpected promotion off her zero-hours contract doing security in order to become Able Archer*, Hiveco's first transhuman thieftaker, and Hamleys have thieves they want taking.

It's rapidly clear that pretty much everyone but Rupert is being exploited and/or double crossed in one way or another, with the Lost Boys at the bottom of the pyramid. But there's a book Rupert wants, no matter who he has to kill for it, a reputed concordance to the Necronomicon that could be really useful to a cult high priest like him, particularly one who backed the wrong deity to manifest first, And what Rupe wants, Eve needs to get, and it just so happens she knows an Imp of a thief.

I don't think you need to have read Stross's Laundry Files books to know how we got to Case Nightmare Green and how the book's universe works, but it certainly won't hurt. I liked this a lot, but more the set-up than the denouement. The denoument has no less than six separate factions, seven if you count Tinkerbell (because the Peter Pan references extend significantly beyond the Lost Boys and Wendy Deere), and I definitely lost track of people,

(And on top of that I had definite suspension of disbelief issues that no one in a genre-savvy team like the Lost Boys protested when they decide to split the party!).

With that caveat, I think Stross deserves credit for some of the characterisation work, I didn't expect to end up caring for Eve and I think he does a particularly good job with Game Boy as an abused trans kid. (It's noticeable that all the unambiguously not-evil characters are LGBT**),

* That name is not reassuring, It's appropriate for reasons that become clear, but Able Archer 83 was the NATO exercise that nearly caused the Politburo to launch a preemptive nuclear strike in the belief NATO was about to storm across the Intra-German Border

** I suppose Rupert could be called bi, but I think it would be more accurate to record his sexual identity as abuser.

British Secret Projects: Fighters 1935-1950, 2nd Edition, Tony Buttler

I bought the first edition of this 15 years ago, and have probably read it a dozen times since. It's the story of all the planes we didn't build in WWII, but that first edition was Fighter and Bombers 1935-1950, and for the second edition they've split the book in two and doubled the page count of each half. There's a lot of unchanged text, and quite a lot that's new, but mostly there's a lot of new pictures and diagrams, mostly excellent, though a few are in terrible condition, but worth a place as the only known illustrations of their types, Overall there's more than enough here to leave me thinking I got my money's worth even with everything I've seen before. I'm not surprised that quite a few more projects have been dug out of the archives over the course of the last 15 years, but I am surprised that several of them are previously completely unknown Spitfire projects. I will be picking up the Bomber 2nd edition, but probably not immediately as I'll definitely be dipping back into this for a while yet.