Quantum of Nightmares, Charles Stross
Quantum of Nightmares, Charles Stross
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Quantum of Nightmares

Author: Charles Stross

Narrator: Gideon Emery

Unabridged: 13 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 01/18/2022


Synopsis

A unique blend of espionage thrills and Lovecraftian horror, Hugo Award–winning author Charles Stross's Laundry Files continues with Quantum of Nightmares.

It’s a brave new Britain under the New Management. The avuncular Prime Minister is an ancient eldritch god of unimaginable power. Crime is plummeting as almost every offense is punishable by death. And everywhere you look, there are
people with strange powers, some of which they can control, and some, not so much.

Hyperorganized and formidable, Eve Starkey defeated her boss, the louche magical adept and billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge, in a supernatural duel to the death. Now she’s in charge of the Bigge Corporation—just in time to discover the lethal trap Rupert set for her long ago.

Wendy Deere’s transhuman abilities have gotten her through many a scrape. Now she’s gainfully employed investigating unauthorized supernatural shenanigans. She swore to herself she wouldn’t again get entangled with Eve Starkey’s
bohemian brother Imp and his crew of transhuman misfits. Yeah, right.

Mary Macandless has powers of her own. Right now she’s pretending to be a nanny in order to kidnap the children of a pair of famous, Government-authorized superheroes. These children have powers of their own, and Mary Macandless is in way over her head.

Amanda Sullivan is the HR manager of a minor grocery chain, much oppressed by her glossy blonde boss—who is cooking up an appalling, extralegal scheme literally involving human flesh.

All of these stories will come together, with world-bending results …

About Charles Stross

CHARLES STROSS (he/him) is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has won three Hugo Awards for Best Novella, including for the Laundry Files tale “Equoid.” His work has been translated into over twelve languages. His novels include the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry series (including Locus Award finalist The Dilirium Brief), and several stand-alones including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn's Children. Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped catastrophes, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stakeout) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing, he tried to change employers just as the bubble burst) to technical writer and prolific journalist covering the IT industry. Along the way he collected degrees in pharmacy and computer science, making him the world’s first officially qualified cyberpunk writer.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bradley

Charlie Stross is going at it with fine verve, yet again. New Management has ushered in a New World Order full of metahumans, cyborgs, brain-munched sorcerers, and a Lesser Evil installed in government to protect the world from the Greater Evil of the world-eating gibbering eternal horrors. We follow......more

Goodreads review by Trish

Charles Stross has still got it. Eve has taken over Rupert's operation and is suddenly uncovering that not only was she (view spoiler)[secretly married to him (hide spoiler)] thanks to her brother not paying attention, good old Rupert was also a much bigger threat than we all believed. Think bishop-of-a-satanic-cult-that-loves-to......more

Goodreads review by Dees

Too much meat, too much repeating things, much too obvious, I miss the old Laundry Files.......more

Goodreads review by Tim

I'm going to side with those who think this is just too much of everything. Too many characters, too many bad guys, too much horror, and too many overdone scenes. It feels as if we're stepping further and further away from the original great base that made us like the Laundry books so much. Sure, it......more

I read this courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. This is a Charles Stross novel on... whatever drugs you take that make you talk at, like, three times the normal speed. (Hmm. Is it speed?) One blurb says this is a Laundry Files novel. Another says that it is Laundry Files-adjacent... and that's......more