Charles Stross – Quantum of Nightmares

Given that Charles Stross has ben publishing his award-winning Laundry Files since 2004, and is 12 books and a number of short stories and novellas into it I don't think anybody needs an introduction to it. Never mind that the book at hand, Quantum of Nightmares, is a sequel in it's own subset (New Management) of the larger setting. Should all of this have passed you by, though, I have 2 pieces of good news for you – firstly, you don't need to have read the entire body of work to enjoy the New Management sequence, it happily stands on it's own (you want to start with the first book, though, called Dead Lies Dreaming). And secondly – but should you be interested in, the whole shebang is clever, entertaining, and in my opinion very much worth your time.

But let's talk about Quantum of Nightmares, the topic for today's ruminations. It is, as said above, the second book in the New Management series, the sequel to Dead Lies Dreaming, and it feels like the author barely caught his breath in-between.
Yes, Rupert is dead and gone (or is he?), and Eve Starkey is now, by dint of having been his Executive Secretary with full access, in charge of the Bigge Corporation (but is she?). What she definitely is, though, as she finds out to her dismay, is married to Rupert; and his chattel, at least according to the ancient legal system on the island nation of Skaro, where the Bigge Corporation is domiciled.
Wendy Deere is still settling into her new job, and trying to stay out of the mess that Eve's brother Imp and his gang of Lost Boys is – tricky if your girlfriend is part of this, of course, or if your investigations inevitably lead back to a scheme Rupert set in motion long ago with some only-slightly-grottier-than-real UK supermarket chain called FlavorsMart. Where recently human DNA has started showing up in the meat produce 3D printed from MRM. Yum.
(sorry, no details, that would be spoiling the fun!).
And we have a new protagonist, Mary MacCandless – she has powers of her own (as have many people in these days), and is pretending to be a Nanny in order to kidnap the children of two Government-level superheroes. Not a grand idea, even before you learn that he kids all have inchoate superpowers of their own, which they don't really understand or can control. Which leaves Mary, as Mafia enforcer without child experience, in rather over her head... but she needs to money, as her father needs special care homes, which only come at extortionate prices.

The story is, as these are wont to be, quite illustrative of the dog eat dog world created by the New Management. Those with power hold all the cards, and the people at the bottom of the pile tear themselves apart. Any relationship with our times and politico-societal structures is purely incidental, of course. Ok, it's not like the top end aren't also competitive and cruel amongst themselves, of course.
This book feels dark, somehow. Darker than the precursor, for example. Or maybe heavier, in topic and handling. Not that some of the Laundry files of the original story arc were fluffy, once we got past the initial math/computation is magic, geeks vs bureaucracy fun bits! But some of the 'playful' interplay between the Lost Boys has gone missing since the last book, and the subject matter cuts closer to the bone.

And there seems to be a huge focus on the meat production/presentation etc industries – slightly near-future in tech capabilities, especially the 3D printing, but presented in all its goriness. On the one hand realistic,future-pointing and deductive from where we are, and on the other quease-inducing 'I did no need to know this' stuff... Veganism-advertising, with an evil grin?

One thing that strikes me with this book is the heavy foreshadowing that the author employs. There's loads of it, and I don't think this is really needed, or helped to draw me in/made me want to read the story any more than the story itself did – not sure what gives...

But overall I found this to be a solid follow-up to the first book in the sequence, and I have the third one (apparently the final one... don't count on this with Charlie, though!) lined up, and expect further enjoyment, and hopefully a bit of escapism between the all-too-real-feeling bits extrapolated from our current society!

More Charles Stross

Title: Quantum of Nightmares
Author: Charles Stross
Series: Laundry Files, New Management
Series Number: 11, 2nd in New Management sequence
Reviewer: Markus
Reviewer URL: http://thierstein.net
Publisher: Orbit
Publisher URL: http://www.orbitbooks.net
Publication Date: 2022
Review Date: 221105
ISBN: 9780356516936
Pages: 368
Format: ePub
Topic: Superheroes
Topic: Alternative Reality

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

Another great book from the author of the laundry files. A dark and hilarious romp involving puppets, meat pies an ultimate evil. This was a much needed respite after certain other reads and I was gripped from beginning to end. I recommend this author’s entire backlist.

Second book in, and I’m a bit unsure about the New Management. I know it’s easy to complain that the old stuff was better, but this series hasn’t sparked for me so far like the Laundry Files did. There’s a couple of reasons. The main cast (Eve, Imp, Game Boy, etc) are very thinly sketched. After two books I don’t feel like I know who they are, what makes them tick, or even like them very much. Also, the author has never been shy about showing you just how much he knows and how clever he is, but that was more bearable in the earlier books when filtered through Bob’s journey from know-nothing naif to top occult espionage guy. Here it slides dangerously close to annoying.

But really, the fundamental problem is, there’s something strangely joyless about it all. We’re in a world where the bad guys have won, and all the corporate satire and endless parades of meat products take on a despairing edge, a “this is it, folks, this is what we have to live with” vibe. Look, some of my best friends are grim dystopias, right? I’ve got nothing against them, but considering it’s trading on a series that started as an extremely fun James Bond meets HP Lovecraft romp the tonal shift feels a bit off to me. There’s not (so far) a hint of resistance or striving for anything better, just endless wretchedness, which not even Mary Poppins taking down a T. Rex with an antitank gun can dispel.

I still largely enjoyed it, but a fair bit less than I did the previous books. I’ll still be reading the next one, in the hope Stross reins in the nihilism and smugness a bit next time.

Despite being a huge Stross fan, I struggled to adjust to the characters in the first New Management off-shoot from the superb Laundry Files so I was looking forward to getting to know them properly in this second offering. Like the first it took me a while to get into it however the storyline soon drew me in as the plot turned more sinister and bleak by the page. If you’re not a vegetarian when you start reading this, you may reconsider by the end. Another great series that for me are must-reads, but I’m left a little disappointed after the excellence of the aforementioned Laundry Files. Definitely start with The Atrocity Archives (Bk 1) if you fancy trying the series.

Second book in the series; where the first one took Peter Pan as it's inspiration, this time it mugs Mary Poppins. While the first book's Eve and Imp and the lost boys deal with the ongoing plans of Mr Bigge and the ambitions of his cult, a fake nanny kidnaps four children and takes them on a magical mystery tour with UFOs tyrannosaurs, and lots of gunfire. This book has a real squick factor, it also takes Sweeney Todd and drags him into the industrial age while casually enabling him with a literally inhuman government.

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group U.K. - Orbit for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Quantum of Nightmares’ by Charles Stross in exchange for an honest review.

As others have said, read Dead Lies Dreaming before starting on this one as it follows directly on from the first book.. I found it rather more comic than its predecessor, particularly in the episodes involving Mary and the Banks children, of whom I hope we hear more. It's also rather more gory and shows that for sheer evil one does not have to go to the lengths of importing an Elder God as Prime Minister. He is off stage in this book, which I found rather a pity.
It's well worth reading but I still harbour a secret hope that the Laundry will rise again.

A sequel to the spin-off from Stross’ longstanding Laundry Files series, Quantum of Nightmares doesn’t fully transcend its humble origins, but like a plucky social-climbing neo-Victorian (anti)hero, it rises above its station by virtue of sheer demented brio. 3.5/5, but rounded up out of goodwill.

To be honest, it doesn’t seem like Stross has been having much fun lately (for very good reasons), but it’s hard not to cackle at Quantum’s unhinged bad-Mary Poppins plot line or to see the relish Stross takes in a deeply macabre Supermarket Sweeny Todd riff. There's a bloody, carnivalesque mood that reminds me of the table-flipping nightmare-Brexit capers of The Delirium Brief, which remains the best recent Laundry-verse work. Quantum never delivers the same giddy shocks, but especially in the middle third of the book it finds a horror-comedy groove that’s more than entertaining.

Still, sequels demand continuity, and the obligatory throughline here to Imp, Eve, and the rest of the gang from Dead Lies Dreaming is by far the least interesting of the plots Stross serves up. We’re thankfully spared the expository dynamics and occasionally-heavy-handed Peter Pan references that took up so much of the last book, but surprisingly little happens to move Imp and Eve’s story forward; Eve catches up with readers’ existing knowledge of how nasty her boss was/is, and Imp and his crew do some…useful support work? Lounge around? Play D&D? It’s hard not to feel like Stross is marking time until the next book for these characters, bouncing our protagonists off extremely stock Nazi-cultist villains even as weirder, funnier action barrels ahead elsewhere.

Quantum also has to visibly strain to tie all these pieces together by its end, which requires some risible coincidences and table-setting that bleed momentum exactly when the tension should be peaking. A really solid conclusion might have excused this, but after all the prep work Stross chews through his final showdown too quickly to take it in. It’s not quite one of Stross’ famous non-endings (*cough* Saturn’s Children *cough*), but it does feel as though evocative imagery and sketched-in action beats are being used as placeholders for a rewrite that never came. It's an unfortunate lapse, and anticlimactic enough that the nitpicks I'd almost swallowed down — five-year-olds don't nap and aren't toddlers, we only need one reminder Eve is a telekinetic who chucks pearls at people, who is this ominous Twilight Zone narrator anyways? — rise back to the top while you're digesting it all.

In the end, though, it's too much fun seeing Stross enjoying himself again, and it’s hard not to hope the last book in the series can somehow marry Quantum’s madcap nihilism and the haunting set pieces of Dead Lies Dreaming into a truly satisfying meal in spite of unpromising ingredients. A bit like certain meat pies.

Stross can't write a bad or boring book: this one is excellent and gripping.
Great storytelling and world building, excellent character development.
As it's the second in a series it's better read them in order.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group U.K. - Orbit for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Quantum of Nightmares’ by Charles Stross in exchange for an honest review. As the book was just released when I began reading, I combined with its unabridged audiobook edition.

This is Book 2 in the New Management series set in the same alternative universe as Stross’ Laundry Files. As this is a continuous story, I would encourage reading in order. I am also wary of mentioning plot details that could be spoilers for Book 1 for those yet to read it.

However, I will note that thief-taker Wendy Deere, cyberpunk Imp and his sister Eve all return along with various new characters. Chief among these is Mary Macandless, who is currently pretending to be a nanny in order to infiltrate the household of a pair of senior government superheroes and kidnap their children.

There was a Peter Pan motif to ‘Dead Lies Dreaming’, and here when on a windy morning Nanny Mary knocks on the door of No. Seventeen where the Banks family resides, it’s clear that Stross is about to get playful with another iconic children’s character.

So while Mary adopted the persona of a stuffy, posh nanny in possession of an ‘interesting’ messenger bag; her inner monologue was much more earthy. Her mission is complicated by the fact that the Banks children have powers of their own. Their road trip adventures were hilarious.

Over the course of the novel the plot lines of Wendy, Eve and Imp, Mary and the Bankses came together.

Stross again impressed me with his skilful blending of multiple genres; there’s science fiction, cyberpunk, Lovecraftian horror, urban fantasy, and plenty of adventure - all infused with comedy.

I loved this and can hardly wait for the next book, ‘Season of Skulls’, due in 2023. Meanwhile, I have a cluster of other titles by Stross awaiting my attention.

A note on the unabridged audiobook edition: its narrator, Imogen Church, was beyond excellent, especially in terms of her voicing of Mary and the Banks children.

Synopsis: Quantum of Nightmares is the sequel to Dead Lies Dreaming, set in an alternate London in the Laundry Files universe, but with a fresh start of characters and topics.

The book takes up exactly at the point where it left Dead Lies Dreaming: Eve Starkey sent her boss Rupert into oblivion. Now she's in charge of the company. Searching through a secret stash she finds out that her boss has set up lethal magical and physical traps for her. He wants to get back from literal hell through some occult ritual involving human sacrifices. The order's base where such a ritual will be conducted is located on one of the smaller Channel Islands modelled after Sark. Rupert bought the island and profits from its feudal governance with mediaeval laws. She gets help from her brother and his heist gang, the "Lost Boys", just like in the first novel.

There is also Wendy Deere who investigates a London-based supermarket chain. They are testing bleeding-edge technology, robots automatically boning livestock and feeding the meat into a 3D printer which produces customer-specific meat products.
<blockquote>Eventually they plan to have vats full of animal tissue culture in every branch, feeding it to 3D printers on the deli counter - meat products without animal cruelty and the risk of another Mad Cow Disease epidemic.</blockquote>
Just wait for those mincemeat golems (no, that's no joke) called "meat puppets" to replace the expensive human workforce!

A third plot line involves Mary, stepping in as a nanny for the children of two superheroes who are about to leave for some super-urgent mission abroad. Now, that one isn't a cute Poppins at all, but she has the mission to kidnap the kids. If only the children wouldn't have powers of their own, the job would be far easier.
<blockquote>The little girl's face was buried against the side of her neck like an infant vampire, but her quivering shoulders signaled manipulative sobbing rather than sanguinary suckling.</blockquote>

Review: Stross kept the comical style from the first novel, but strengthened the horror aspect by a multitude. When it was light horror in the predecessor, it includes absolute disgusting details up to projectile vomiting here. You have a sensitive stomach? Do yourself a favor and don't dive into this novel's guts and bloods. The synopsis's hint of meat production should be enough to figure out what I'm talking about. If you get any Sweeney Todd vibes, that's totally intentional!

There are a lot of funny situations and dialogues where I had to laugh out loud. They just couldn't counter the super bad feelings I've got from the nauseating descriptions.

Usually, when I soldier through such revolting parts and make it past the halfway-through mark, I continue to the end. This novel had a special, extremely uncomforting and disgusting sentence at around 75% for me:
<blockquote>Remember, work sets you free!</blockquote>
If anyone of you doesn't recognize this idiom, let me tell you that it's a Nazi slogan <a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei>"Arbeit macht frei"</a> at the entrance of concentration camps.

This crossed a red line. Coming out of nowhere, without context, this idiom isn't funny at all, and I consider it unacceptable to include it that way. 

I could barely go on. 

Mind you, the novel has its qualities. It's a fast page-turner, a superhero thriller with Cthulhu vibes, just like the first volume. But Stross turned up the volume of all the elements I hate, especially of horror and disgust factor. If you like those and you're not especially sensitive about holocaust, then you will like this book.

Quantum of Nightmares is the second in the New Management series, which is a spin-off from Charles Stross' Laundry Files series. I think it's important to read the series in order, so that you're properly introduced to the characters so I was glad to have read Dead Lies Dreaming before this.

Quantum of Nightmares is a high speed super-villan caper, with magic and elder gods, set in an almost-recognisable present day London. If you're squeamish, be warned that there are some rather gruesome parts, which have made me think twice about visiting a supermarket deli counter.

A highly recommended read, but make sure you read Dead Lies Dreaming first.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

Quantum of Nightmares is the immediate sequel to Dead Lies Dreaming, both stories being set in Charles Stross's Lovecraftian version of the present in which advanced mathematics and computer science are, in effect, magic and can be used to summon unhallowed creatures from beyond the walls of the world. In the main sequence of novels, this danger is fought by an occult arm of the British Civil Service known as the "Laundry". It's a fight the Laundry has been slowly losing, resulting, before Dead Lies Dreaming, in a hostile takeover of the Government by an undead eldritch god whose regime is referred to euphemistically as "The New Management".

This isn't just background to Quantum of Nightmares and Dead Lies Dreaming, rather both books very much examine, from below, the state of things given this premise. An actually existing Dark(ish) Lord isn't therefore just a fantasy trope, but a political fact to be endured - with the inevitable satire that allows, given the state of Uk politics in the early 20s.

To this end the two books have their own cast of characters which is quite distinct from those of the Laundry books (whose protagonists have over their own history levelled up quite a bit and don't provide that plebs-eye view of the world). There are the Lost Boys - Imp, Game Boy, and Doc - basically a pack of well-intentioned rogues occupying a crumbling mansion in Kensington, who in Dead Lies Dreaming had a bit of a Peter Pan thing going on. There's Del, the Deliverator. She's the getaway driver. Mary MacCandless, a professional thief and grifter trying to keep up with her dad's care home fees any way she can. Mary (who has a magical bag) in this book sweeps into the life of the Banks children and takes them on a wild adventure. (Where have I heard those names before?) And there's Eve, Imp's sister, a high-flying executive who may just have exiled her cultist boss Rupert behind those same walls of the universe and taken over effective control of the Bigge Organisation. And finally there's Wendy (Deere, not Darling), Del's girlfriend, an ex-cop and now private thief-taker, just getting by in her single room apartment, who's been employed to look into some shady goings-on at the supermarket chain Rupert was planning to take over.

The world of The New Management is a grim place if you're not on top. Criminality is far form discouraged, indeed it's recognised with a host of new offences, because criminals make excellent sacrifices, an important consideration when the country is governed by one of the Dark Gods. Skull racks abound, both on motorway gantries and on the new structure at Marble Arch, or perhaps I should say Tyburn. (Not, NOT an artificial mound...) The book has a distinct 18th century vibe, as a Mr Wilde, the 'thief-taker general', operates in a grey area between the law, private enterprise and his own pocket and as the unfortunate 'de-emphasised' underclass (think "hostile environment" applied to those economic units that have no obvious utility) disappear in the night to reappear as... well, you'll have to read the book to find out about that.

It's a perfectly pitched story that portrays a nightmarish near future that may be based in part on cosmic horror, but reads as equally plausible speculation about where the unrestrained business methods of our private equity overlords, and their tech-solution pushing hirelings, may go. Truly, the real horror is less the dictates of the New Management than the depths of what humanity may do. Kidnapping, murder and control of others by whatever means are the games here, with everyone enmeshed in different ways into the system that will surely in the end grind them up for feedstock. Eve in particular faces an even more gruesome future under the spell of Rupert, who's taken to sending emails from beyond the grave.

It's hard to convey in a review the sheer texture of taint in Quantum of Nightmares, the sense of daily corruption and collusion with mundane corporate structures aligned to mind-warping evil (I did always have my doubts about HR...) Fantasy yes, but there is a sense in which it very much reads as being about these times. It's also witty and laden with references and cultural echoes. Really, you just have to read this book - and you will surely want to do if you have been keeping up with the Laundry. If you haven't, I'd begin with Dead Lies Dreaming first).