Title: The Jennifer Morgue Author: Charles Stross Year: 2006 Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press Reviewer: Christian

Ternus "The Jennifer Morgue" is the sequel to Charles Stross' novel, "The Atrocity Archives," and features the return of Bob Howard, computer geek turned computational demonologist extraordinaire. The book continues Stross' delightful style from the first book, blending elements of Neal Stephenson's references to hacker culture, Lovecraftian eldritch horrors, and Tom Clancy's spy thrillers. The background of the series, in a nutshell, is that throughout modern history, people have been discovering that certain types of mathematical computations (e.g. the "Turing-Lovecraft Theorem") can create holes into other planes, causing Unspeakable Horrors of various sorts to come through. Shortly after they discover this, they are either a) very dead or b) conscripted. See, like many other discoveries in history, the government has gotten there first, and dealt with the matter in a staggeringly inefficient, bureaucratic fashion. Bob Howard works for the Laundry, a British government agency tasked with managing interactions with the occult. As the book says, it's somewhere between "No Such Agency" and "Destroy Before Reading." How the Laundry gets recruits can best be described by a direct (non-spoiler) quote from "The Jennifer Morgue": "The Laundry collects computer scientists who stumble across the elements of computational demonology in much the same way that Stalin used to collect jokes about himself [footnote: He had two Gulags full.]. About six years ago I nearly landscaped Wolverhampton, not to mention most of Birmingham and the Midlands, while experimenting with a really neat, new rendering algorithm that just might have accidentally summoned up the entity known to the clueful as 'f*ck, it's Nyarlathotep! Run!' (and to everyone else as 'F*ck, run!')" The plot of the book is genuinely intriguing---I read the book straight through in one sitting. Bob Howard is tasked with stopping a rogue billionaire from raising something dark and terrible (code-named JENNIFER MORGUE) from the vasty deeps of the ocean (where the Great Old Ones live---good thing we have a treaty with them, right?). In order to do this, a powerful invocation called a "Hero geas" requires him to step into the role of... well, I won't give it away. There is fast-paced spy action with a generous measure of humor (much of it side-splittingly hilarious). The main character is paired with an agent from the Black Chamber (the terrifying US counterpart to the Laundry) named Ramona Random, a "beautiful but deadly" operative who defies accurate description. The plot has some interesting twists and turns, and the book never takes itself too seriously ("You think you're joking? He *monologued* at me. With *PowerPoint*."). I could quote endlessly from it, but I won't---it's a treasure trove of humorous quotes. One thing I love about the book is how it transitions almost seamlessly from mission briefings (delivered directly into the subconscious, of course) to summoning ancient terrors from the deeps (of which there are two sorts: those code-named BLUE HADES, who you

really, really don't want to mess with, and those code-named DEEP SEVEN, who, well, let's just say BLUE HADES are afraid of them) to making references to hacker culture (Slashdot, Linux, etc.). The two books it reminded me the most of were Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. Bob Howard goes straight from talking about computational demonology to complaining about Microsoft PowerPoint without pausing for breath---and it works. If you're a geek, you'll probably love this book. There are so many references to modern geek culture and humor (when I was reading it in the kitchen, my dorm-mates commented that they'd never seen me laughing so hard). At times, the cultural references were so specific and appropriate that I just stared and said, "I can't believe this book exists"---and I mean that in the best possible way. The main character is very much a geek: when confronting one of the primary villains, he stares him straight in the face---and makes a Slashdot reference (which is funny even if you don't get it, but absolutely hilarious if you do). He also gets very nervous when people try to separate him from his electronics; after all, "to compute is to be." Quoth Bob Howard, "Give me a bottle of Mountain Dew, an MP3 player hammering out something by VNV Nation, and a crate of Pringles, that's like being at home. Give me root access on a hostile necromancer's server farm, and I *am* at home." If you're not a geek, however, you probably won't get many of the references in the book. It's still worth reading, though, especially if you enjoyed the first book. I would *not* recommend reading this book before the first. What parts didn't I like? I did *not* like "Pimpf," the short story that accompanies the book (it takes place almost entirely within a Neverwinter Nights game---no, really). I would almost recommend skipping the short story, especially if you have as much of a gut-level aversion to leet-speak as I do. It is not, in my opinion, up to par with any other Bob Howard stories. I believe it really overemphasizes the geek/gamer references while minimizing the spy/occult aspects that make the other stories so good. What would I recommend? Read the first book and see if you like it. If you liked it, run, don't walk, and get ahold of "The Jennifer Morgue." Seriously, go NOW. It may be the most fun book you've read in a long time---it certainly was for me. NOTE: "The penny drops" is British slang for finally understanding something. This will be relevant if you read this book.