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| Manufacturer: Ace
Category: EBooks
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $4.01 (29%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 18125
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
Publication Date: March 3, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Far out, man! February 22, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
What a great book! Charles Stross' "Atrocity Archives/Concrete Jungle is a mixtue of Lovecraft, Len Deighton as well as Monty Python and Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" all in one. This is a book that a reader will have to read multiple times and will glean something new from the book in every reading.
Bob Howard is an IT (Info Technology)support person for the Laundry, a British Department under the OSI banner, now known as MIV and MI VI. The Laundry is the Department that deals with the paranormal for Britain and endeavors to keep the nation free from events and creatures from other dimensions and universes that "would like to suck brains and souls from our bodies." In Mr. Stross' world, supernatural events and creatures are not conjured through arcane blood rituals but through uses of computers, mathematical formulas and other non-supernatural, technical means. Other countries have paranormal departments as part of their spy/security apparatus. For example, the U.S. paranormal department is known as the Black Chamber.
The reader discovers that no one joins the Laundry, they are forced to "join". Bob Howard "joined" the Laundry after he was discovered playing with a mathematical theorem on his computer that threatened to obliterate the town of Wolverhampton in a ghastly Lovecraftian manner. He is promoted from IT to field agent after rescuing a summoning class from a possessed classmate who did not follow the rules and discovers that his first case means saving Britain and the rest of the world from a nameless horror from another universe who is working it's way to our earth with past cooperation from a renegade SS Unit, the Ahenenerbe, who used a ghastly summoning ritual that pertains to the Holocaust, to escape the current earth at the end of WWII.
This book defies convention. This is a mixture of Science Fiction, Horror and British Humor all rolled into one fascinating mix. The reader becomes intimately involved in the minutiae of the British Civil Service and their frustrating and over beaureaucratic methods of conducting business. Bob, for example, lives in constant fear of explaining his every action and decision to the unseen but fearome "Auditors". Stross' characters are enagaging and memorable; from the sensuous and mysterious Dr. Dominique "Mo" O'Brien who has a major part to play in Bob's first mission, to the mysterious and very sinister Angleton who Bob ends up being a Private personal secretary, the British term for "Administrative Assistant", Bridget and Harriet from HR, his fellow Laundry worker roomates Pinky and Brains and Bob's slightly harried superior Andy.
I love this book. I am currently finishing "the Jennifer Morgue", the second, but hopefully not final Laundry/Bob Howard novel by Mr. Stross. Finally, if you haven't caught the direct parallel between the main character's name and a famous American writer, then you are not a true fantasy/sci-fi/horror fan. Congratulations, Mr. Stross what an excellent novel you have written.
 CthuluPunk! February 18, 2008
What a hoot... enough inside geek jokes to choke a Gibbering Horror...
I finished it in record time... and re-read it a day later to catch everything I missed the first time!
Completely undefinable; Stross has created a unique world and I love it! December 25, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"The Atrocity Archives" (which includes the title story as well as the short story "The Concrete Jungle" both in this edition as well as in the omnibus edition that I have, entitled "In Her Majesties' Occult Services") is a very unusual piece - the world that Stross has created is our world, but just one-half step over ... maybe. Or maybe not - maybe he has just provided us with the real story for the first time? Who knows?
Mixing Cthonian mythos, quantum physics and metaphysics, mathematical metatheory and spy thriller, Stross has made reading this book kind of like watching Monty Python in Japanese. There is simply no way to define the genre. That said, it is certainly a fun ride! Populated with computer programmer wizards, electronic gorgons, zombie birds and genetically engineered mer-people, this is a weird and wonderful world.
Bob is our hero, a member of the Laundry - a section of the British Secret Services that is so secret that even knowing about it is illegal unless you are a part of it. The Laundry is dedicated to making certain that the veils between the realities don't end up being pierced by accident - some mathematician using an unusual theorem or a computer programmer coming up with something new - that would actually end up calling up the Elder Gods or opening up a portal to allow the gibbering hordes of demons access to our world. Bob was conscripted when a computer program he was working on almost ended up remaking a large part of a section of Britain. He recently made the mistake of asking to work in "active service," and that request has just been approved ... things keep going from bad to worse as he is continually thrown into circumstances that end up snowballing into events beyond his control; and things are never quite what they seem.
In "Concrete Jungle" he is awakened at 4 am to go and look at concrete cows in Milton Keynes; it appears that there may be an extra one there (there is a herd of concrete cows - sculptures. There are supposed to be 8. Bob finds 9). Bob discovers what appears to be the work of a basilisk or gorgon. How can this be? Again, things quickly tobaggon out of his control.
Bob is the perfect hero for the modern age - armed with a Palm Pilot and cell phone (and occasionally a pigeon's foot) rather than a gun; scrawny and nerdish rather than tall and handsome, he is the epitome of the modern computer geek/hacker. Somehow, despite his tendency to stick his nose where it doesn't belong, and to jump into the middle of things where he has no business being, he manages to always come out ... well ... alive.
I can definitely recommend this book to anyone who: likes dry British humour, likes Monty Python, likes Charles Stross, likes Ctholian mythology, likes H. P. Lovecraft generally, likes spy thrillers, likes alternate reality worlds, or just enjoys a really weird and wonderful yarn. Don't miss it!
Senseless and confusing... November 15, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love this book! I've read it multiple times. It's a fun, entertaining, confusing, pointless mishmash of every book genre out there. And somehow Stross makes it work. Most of these reviews don't do it justice. Don't think about it, don't take it seriously, and don't go all geeky about it...just read and enjoy.
tons for fun... October 30, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Neat trick, Mr. Stross. Equal parts Lovecraft and Greene, from the point of view of the drafted IT support guy who becomes the "hero". Siiliness and great pacing abounds. Well worth my hard-earned, rapidly devaluing US dollars. I'll be looking for the Jeniffer Morgue now.
(already read others by Stross... Accellerando- OK not the best but enjoyable and above average, the Glasshouse -pretty darn cool)
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