The Labyrinth Index

Laundry Files, Book 9

By: Charles Stross

Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard

Britain is under New Management. The disbanding of the Laundry - the British espionage agency that deals with supernatural threats - has culminated in the unthinkable: an elder god in residence in 10 Downing Street.

But in true 'the enemy of my enemy' fashion, Mhari Murphy finds herself working with His Excellency Nylarlathotep on foreign policy - there are worse things, it seems, than an elder god in power, and they lie in deepest, darkest America.

A thousand-mile-wide storm system has blanketed the Midwest, and the president is nowhere to be found. Mhari must lead a task force of disgraced Laundry personnel into the storm front to discover the truth. But working for an elder god is never easy, and as the stakes rise, Mhari will soon question exactly where her loyalties really lie.

2019, Hugo Award for Best Series, Short-listed

©2018 Charles Stross (P)2018 Hachette Audio UK

Critic reviews

Brilliantly disturbing and funny at the same time (Ben Aaronovitch, author of RIVERS OF LONDON)

Charles Stross owns this field, and his vast, cool intellect has launched yet another mad, sly entertainment that will strangle the hell out of anything else on offer right now (Warren Ellis, author of Transmetropolitan)

Stross at the top of his game - which is to say, few do it better (KIRKUS)

Alternately chilling and hilarious (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY)

Ferociously enjoyable (SFX)

felt the Reader got many of the characters wrong

especially Pete and the PM just seemed out of touch with their presentation in the previous books.

not the best laundry files story either, though clearly in. their spirit. Murphy's perspective worked well

Narrator needs to STOP character voice acting

I completely understand when the author has a female narrator take the lead for a book where a female character is the primary storyteller - it makes sense. I like seeing more female voice actors. However to address this title in particular, the voice acting for the male characters is just terrible. They feel more like pulp arch villain characters, done in parody, than any actual legitimate male roles. Some are worse than others, but all of the males are terribly voice acted. I would far, far sooner Laurence Bouvard had of just narrated the text, rather than voice acted it - particularly with characters where seven of the previous titles have cleared defined the speech, accent and mannerisms of all the core characters.

I've made no less than five attempts to sit and actually listen through this title, falling asleep most times, and having to rewind and go again... and the high pitch, faux nasally Dick Dastardlyesque male vocals is just pure torture. I cannot deal with it, and am giving up on the book and just going to read a synopsis.

A pronunciation guide would've helped.

Enjoyed the story, as you could likely expect with the 9th book in a series.

The narrator was mostly fine, with the exception of the pronunciation of the name "Mhari", which is quite troublesome when that's the major character of the book.

terrible voice acting

narrator gives everyone cartoonishly silly voices, sometimes ignoring the description given in text, ie we're told someone speaks in monotone and she reads their speech like a hyper caffeinated squirrel.

other than that it also didn't help that Mohary (sp?) was the protagonist of this one and I find her very unlikable. I was constantly hoping she'd die and it's very unsatisfying to see her constantly "falling upward" career-wise.