The Delirium Brief

Charles Stross
Orbit

Someone is dead set to air the spy agency’s dirty laundry in The Delirium Brief, the next installment to Charles Stross’ Hugo Award-winning comedic dark fantasy Laundry Files series!
Bob Howard’s career in the Laundry, the secret British government agency dedicated to protecting the world from unspeakable horrors from beyond spacetime, has entailed high combat, brilliant hacking, ancient magic, and combat with indescribably repellent creatures of pure evil. It has also involved a wearying amount of paperwork and office politics, and his expense reports are still a mess.

Now, following the invasion of Yorkshire by the Host of Air and Darkness, the Laundry’s existence has become public, and Bob is being trotted out on TV to answer pointed questions about elven asylum seekers. What neither Bob nor his managers have foreseen is that their organization has earned the attention of a horror far more terrifying than any demon: a British government looking for public services to privatize.

Inch by inch, Bob Howard and his managers are forced to consider the truly unthinkable: a coup against the British government itself.

With this, the 8th of Stross' Lovecraftian spy series 'The Laundry Files' we get to view the fallout of the previous volumes invasion of the Elves alongside a sudden devastating attack on the very agency itself from foes both new and old.  Bob Howard is back at the centre of things after being awol last time round in favour of one of the 'phangs' and it's good to have him back as things are a lot more personable with the Eater of Souls as our narrator.

I'm not entirely on board - yet - with the current developments in the storyline. Stross almost lost me entirely with the superhero story and the elf bothering of the last wasn't entirely to my taste and everything has gotten a little too overt and blockbustery.  The books felt like they were on a more stale footing when it was all more clandestine in nature but I'm splitting hairs.  This is another really fun read in an often excellent series and even those books I was just whingeing about were a riot.  The fallout from this story and it's predecessor will no doubt be at the core of the books to come and it'll be fascinating and fun to watch all the health and safety violations that will make life a little too interesting for Bob and his colleagues.

Buy it here - The Delirium Brief: A Laundry Files Novel

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