Review of The Fuller Memorandum – Book 3 of The Laundry series by Charles Stross

This account is narrated as a debrief by the longsuffering Bob Howard, who works for the undercover British agency known as The Laundry. They are a down-at-heel, typically Brit-bodge version of the Men in Black, busy battling with nasty occult occurrences and alien incursions. Bob is trying to come to terms with the emotional fallout after his latest hair-raising adventure.

A top secret dossier goes missing. At the same time, Angleton, Bob’s boss disappears. No one is saying very much at The Laundry but suspicion, like mud, sticks. While struggling to clear his own name and Angleton’s tarnished reputation, Bob also has to cope with over-helpful Russian agents, worries about an apocalyptic cult targeting his wife – and the trail of dead bodies. What is so important about the missing Fuller Memorandum and why is everyone who knows dying…?

Told in first person viewpoint, this spy horror clips along with all the zest and ink-black humour of the previous books in the series. Poor old Bob has to put up with a lot, and his world-weary, humorous commentary gives this book an extra twist of enjoyment. Stross evidently has great affection for Bond films and H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, because he borrows elements from both these influences and mixes them in a neat combination that has you chuckling while your skin pimples… It is a uniquely disturbing and memorable reading experience.

The world works wonderfully well and Stross skilfully plays with the tedium of Bob’s everyday office life set against the dangerous nature of his job. So the knowledge that we are on the verge of being invaded by some ghastly alien power vies with the notion that all paperclip movement needs to be strictly monitored because they become imprinted with traces of the documents they fasten… The book teeters on the edge of farce and horror all the way to the suitably horrific climax.

Stross is no slouch at characterisation, either. Mo, Bob’s intrepid and very accomplished wife, is beautifully drawn. But Angleton, Bob’s mysterious boss, is the true star of this tale and Bob’s viewpoint of him, along with his understandable resentment as a subordinate, is compelling enough to draw us in and make us care – very important in this story.

Any grizzles? Well… I’m being ultra-picky here – but in a genre where pace is everything, there were instances where I felt Bob’s doom-laden monologues could have done with being pruned back for the sake of keeping the tension wound sufficiently tight. But, overall, it is a trifling detail. I think this book is a triumph. If you’re feeling a bit jaded and looking for something truly different, then look no further. You won’t pick anything else off the shelves quite like this, I guarantee it.
4.5 stars

Review of ‘Unseen Academicals’ by Terry Pratchett

This book – unlike his other recent best-selling success Nation – is set in Pratchett’s famous Discworld. (A flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants, standing on the back of the Great A’Tuin – a giant turtle – that swims through space.) Unseen Academicals is the thirty-seventh Discworld novel.

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork – not the old-fashioned grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with point hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match without using magic, so they’re in the mood for trying everything else.

The prospect of the Big Match draws together a likely lad with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt. (No one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too.)

As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football – the important thing about football – is that it is not just about football.

This is vintage Discworld fare. Old favourites such as Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully and Lord Vetinari, tyrant of Anhk-Morpork, head up the cast of colourful and varied characters, who also include newcomers Dave Likely, Glena and Mr Nutt. As ever, Pratchett uses his fantastic backdrop to make sharply acute observations about contemporary life. There are the usual suspects – the rights of the individual versus the state; responsibility of power – and in this book, football is gently prodded for the more ridiculous aspects of the sport and the fashion industry also gets the Pratchett treatment.

However, the darker tone apparent in some of the more recent Discworld novels, such as Making Money, Monstrous Regiment and Thud! is less obvious in Unseen Academicals, which contains more gags and one-liners. For ardent Discworld fans, this book ticks all the boxes. However, if by some fluky chance you’ve managed to miss the joys of Discworld, I wouldn’t advise that you start with Book 37 in the series. While they don’t exactly run in strict chronological order, there is a definite progression with characters. So, in order to get the best out of Discworld, start with the exuberant fun of The Colour of Magic and work forward. You’ll find – when you get there – although lacking the inspired brilliance of Small Gods (my personal favourite), Unseen Academicals is a worthy addition to the canon.
9/10