The Delirium Brief

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I accidentally read this book before “The Nightmare Stacks”, so I was pretty much in the dark about what was happening up north, or who Cassie was, or why we have a concentration camp filled with elves. On the other hand, since this was the next book after The Annihilation Score, it was a welcome return to form.

Bob is back in this book, after being absent from the last two Laundry books. At this point, Bob has climbed the greasy pole to upper management of the Laundry thanks to inheriting the Eater of Souls from his former boss. He is still separated from Mo because, while she no longer has her accursed violin, he fears that he can lose control of the Eater while sleeping.

Each of the Laundry books seems to exploit a different genre - James Bond, LeCarre, Superheroes, Tolkien. I'm not sure what this one incorporates, unless it is simply Lovecraft, because the Eldritch horrors are beginning to appear in spades. Thus, we see the return of Reverend Schiller with his cult of tongue-ridden parasites. Schiller's parasites are new and improved and now target the genitals to gross and creepy effect.

At the same time, Bob gets tasked to meet with an agent from the occult operations division of the US Postal Service. (The USPS got into the occult as part of Comstock Act; along with intercepting porn and drugs, the Post Office began to acquire magical arcana and occult objects.) It seems that the Comstock Act division has been outsourced and privatized to Schiller's crew. Now, Schiller is in Britain with a similar agenda, plus Schiller is making inroads into suborning the upper echelons of Britain with his genital parasites.

Because of the disaster in Leeds, the Laundry is out in the open, and the public and the government now know that there is both a magical problem and a standing bureaucracy that seems to fall outside of regulatory oversight and the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. Before you can say “Cthulhu wears boxers,” the Laundry is shut down, its employees are terminated, its various operations are left to swing in the wind, and England is wide open for take-over by the genital-parasite demon cult.

This book works like a three-ring circus where the reader's attention is constantly moving from one act to another. All the balls are in the air until the very end. Will Britain succumb to the genital-parasites? Why is the Chief Auditor meeting with the most dangerous man in Britain? Will Mo and Bob be able to work things out? Why is Bob's nemesis, Iris Carpenter, being released from her internment and rehabilitated?

This book obviously represents a break with the old Laundry, the hidebound, tradition-filled, secret operation. How Stross takes the Laundry in a new direction remains to be seen.

This book is a return to Laundry form. Bob is older and more experienced, but every promotion leaves him in the role of the newbie. Stross plays the bureaucrat, legalistic game well in how the Laundry restructures itself so as to continue to operate as a subject to the Crown but not the government.

The story is exciting, suspenseful and humorous. It is well-worth the time and investment.