The eighth case in Charles Stross' Laundry Files, the Hugo
Award–winning series described by Kirkus Reviews as “a
weirdly alluring blend of super-spy thriller, deadpan
comic fantasy, and Lovecraftian horror.”
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. There’s a lot of
potential shareholder value in the Laundry’s “knowledge
assets.”
Inch by inch, Bob Howard and his managers are forced to
consider the truly unthinkable: a coup against the British
government itself.
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