Book Review: The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross

This was the second book I've read by British SF/Fantasy author Charlie Stross, the first being The Family Trade.  The Atrocity Archives has two stories, "The Atrocity Archives" and "The Concrete Jungle", both featuring darkside hacker Bob Howard and his (mis-)adventures in The Laundry, a super-secret UK agency struggling to hold back the Lovecraftian apocalypse.

The Atrocity Archives is a better effort by Stross than Family Trade, largely because the stories hang together better, and there are fewer moments where a discontinuity or mistake jarred me out of the text. Perhaps that's because Atrocity Archives posits multiple universes, not just two like Family Trade, and differences in larger policy and law can be ascribed to the central universe in the story not being this one. 

Stross notes that one of his inspirations, besides the obvious one of H.P. Lovecraft (and if you haven't read Lovecraft, you will be confused by  Atrocity Archives), is spy thriller master Len Deighton. The inspiration is clear; so clear, in fact, much as reading Lovecraft is a must before picking up this book, reading Deighton's spy fiction is a brief detour that I would highly recommend.

I have read a later Laundry story by Stross as well. His writing improves, in no small part because in the later story ("Equoid") Stross emphasizes the bureaucratic hurdles before his hero Bob Howard as much or more than the supernatural foe.  It is the humor that Stross brings out in the absurdity of bureaucratic business-as-usual while attending to the urgent business of throwing back the forces of darkness that sets The Laundry apart from the usual spy or horror tale.