Book Review: The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross

The Jennifer Morgue is a Lovecraftian spy thriller with humor for geeks. Also, it is the second book of the Laundry Files series. I’m not sure which one the book is: a eulogy for Bond movies and books or trying to fix them with a beta-male character and hint of realism as far as the Lovecraftian universe can go. Whatever the reasons are, it is a fast novel with gadgets, dangerous missions, and a lot of confusion. The story and characters also show how well-read Charles Stross is and how he doesn’t shy away from thorough research.

The Jennifer Morgue is highly enjoyable fiction, which let me turn off my analytical mind and enjoy it. That said, sometimes I wished there to be some gravitas to the story as clearly Charles Stross has firm opinions about the world and what is going on, especially predicting what kind of unknown technology waits for us. I will read on the series and see if his narrative voice gets stronger, which I know is a weird thing to say about a book as the characters were strong to carry on their own. They were. 

About the humor. It is about office politics (PowerPoints from hell,) technology related, and poking fun at Bond archetypes, and all this is spiced with demons and tentacle monsters. The part I enjoyed the most was the tentacle monsters and demons, I didn’t get that into the spy stuff. The only time I think I smirked was when PowerPoints were mentioned, but that is me. The book is definitely funny, light, worth to read. I love the Lovecraftian setting. Sometimes I wish it was real, but then again, that would be insane, dangerous, and horrendous, yet, if I could open the portal to other dimensions and make the monsters of this world more concrete instead of callous everyday evils we put others through, I would do that.

Thank you for reading and have a splendid day! Also, if you happen to stumble into a portal to another dimension, please let me know.