Quantum of Nightmares

The New Management #2

by Charles Stross

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...

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Audiobook, Lovecraftian

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 11, 2022

About the author

Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy.

Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams and Richard Morgan.

SF Encyclopedia: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_...

Tor: http://us.macmillan.com/author/charle...

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

This book is what happens if you put superheroes, HP Lovecraft, The Office, and Mary Poppins into a blender. An evil blender.

Immense fun, picking up immediately after the end of book 1 (don't even think about starting here). Ex-henchwoman and sorcerer Eve is trying to complete the corporate takeover she started by killing her boss (also, trying to stop him coming back, oops), aided by her brother and his motley crew of superpowered layabouts; ex cop Wendy is investigating bizarre and indeed disgusting goings on at a supermarket with an even worse HR department than usual (I *know*); a fake nanny with a bag of infinite holding has infiltrated the family of a pair of superheroes.

The various plotlines weave together very enjoyably, at accelerating pace. Some cracking jokes, fun pop culture references, ingenious magic, good action sequences, and the supermarket horror is proper grim. Plus plenty of overt political comment and satire because seriously, look around you. And Ultra-Violent Mary Poppins is a joy.

Let me also note that the cast is properly diverse with queer couples and a trans boy, and the sort of racial mix you would expect from a book set in London but frequently don't get, plus three of the four main viewpoint characters are women.

Very much looking forward to how this story resolves!

I had an ARC from the author.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 some very interesting, even rather hilarious, adventures involving meat pies, puppets, mind-blowingly evil children on a cross-country romp, deadly corporate traps, a Mute Poet God, and a not-quite-named-Kroger's grocery store involving cultists. And it might be best not to mention HR. Please. Just don't mention HR. Or the dragons.

In other words, it's a Tuesday. And as long as you're buying pizza, I'm rolling my dice.


A great flood of characters, wonderful multiple plotlines that eventually slam together, and all the best feel of Stross's Laundry Files in a Brave New World (of Lovecraftian monstrosities). I look forward to these SO MUCH and they always carry me away.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charles Stross has still got it.

Eve has taken over Rupert's operation and is suddenly uncovering that not only was she secretly married to him 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-sacrifice-humans kinda threat. Naturally, not even she can handle this level of shit by herself, especially since we don't know for sure what's happened to Rupert and if he could come back or left a few magical traps for Eve. Thus, Imp and his gang are back - and are more entangled with the events unfolding in this book than they/we originally thought, too. I mean, who could expect Eve's problem, the next generation of superheroes (meta-humans, Officer Friendly has unfortunately disappeared under mysterious circumstances), kidnapped super-children AND human sacrifices being related? *snickers*
And then there is the weird 3D printing of meat in this creepy future under the New Management that has Wendy investigating the disappearance of people for her company (it is ironic that she and her boss, privately employed thieftakers are more like cops than any actual ones). Oh, but let's better not mention the dragons she encounters in HR. No, this is not a metaphor. Muhahahahahahahahahaha.

Yes, all is connected. Yes, all of it in a dark-magic kind of way. Right down to a creepy castle complete with an asshole-butler on an island off the coast of England that is its own legal realm.

References to Doctor Who and Terry Pratchett are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the deliciously sarcastic writing this author is pampering us with. I mean, we even get a cross between Missy and Mrs. Poppinswith one hell of a Hermione-like handbag - I WANTZ ONE (minus the "corrections" it keeps making)! We also get loads of snide remarks about retail, big supermarket chains as well as current political dos and don'ts (not preaching, but discretely, darkly humorously pointing out the problems the author sees in RL). Which makes the board meeting one of my favourite scenes in the entire book. *cackles*

I have to admit that I didn't love this quite as much as the last one, but I still chuckled frequently and the particular/peculiar magic system created for this world is always a delight. Not to mention that when things are finally converging, the confrontation is VERY rewarding and ... explosive. *lol*

[Dees Dorszewska · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Tim Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 was time for a new direction, but. Ben Aaronovitch has been able to extend his successful Rivers of London series without going quite so far afield.

I wasn't that keen on the GameBoy group in the previous book, but they are better here. It's the Banks kids that were really, really annoying and tedious until the very end, when suddenly their level-1 skills became level-4. Mary's magic messenger bag was a convenient Bugs-Bunny-like problem solver, but I liked what Stross did with it as we went on. I'm still not quite sure how we all accept that any such bag is exempt from rules of mass and inertia.

And I wonder how GameBoy can not only dodge bullets, but also lead other people to follow him safely through a hail of bullets. They would ALL have to be able to move faster than, yes I'm going to say it, a speeding bullet. Handwaving and nonsense are preferable to "he just can, OK? Lighten up!"

By the end, I was wondering how Stross imagined us reading this. Are we in the novel version of a computer game? A graphic novel? A full-on comic? This came to mind because that's where I expect to find magicians who are super-powerful and unstoppable -- until the next character comes on stage. Thanos, Q, ... I never liked those characters because the author has no constraints to navigate.

And yes, the horror was over the top. I've read worse, but never in a book that was also trying to be amusing.

I can't say I'm eagerly awaiting the next one. This series may have jumped the shark.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 the accurate one. I haven't read every Laundry Files, but I've read enough that I know what's going on. The start of this novel, though, was unrecognisable... so then I went to look it up, and it's the sequel (not mentioned in the blurbs I saw) to a spin-off. So... that's all important information to have on hand. (There is no Bob Howard in this novel.) Having said that, I did read the whole thing and I did largely enjoy it, so Stross manages to get enough background info in without dry info-dumps to make it understandable... eventually.

CW: there's some pretty gross stuff here. Think... meat packaging... and really the very worst bits about what can go wrong in abattoirs. Also, and I'm only slightly joking, if you have a phobia about HR and their policies, this is not the book for you; it takes corporate speak and the ill-intentions of large corporations to a whole new level. I suspect this does count as horror, in which case it's right on the giddy edge for me.

There are many different strands entwined throughout this story. There's a pseudo-nanny looking after kids who are not what they seem (well, they're annoying little kids but with Extras); there's loafers who just want to play D&D who get pulled into annoying real world stuff; there's the aforementioned HR and a truly heinous view of cut-price supermarkets and a nightmarish future for how they might turn a profit. There are desperate people and sad people and bewildered people; there are double-crosses and worshipping of sinister entities and ruthless acts that just made me blink at their atrociousness. It's not a particularly happy book; nor is it uplifting; so if that's what you need right now, go somewhere else. But there is a dark humour to parts, and there's a diverse cast of characters (trans, queer, not-Anglo), and the occasional good deed, so it's entirely and unrelentingly depressing.

... when I put it like that I'm not sure how I managed to get through it! It's not quite as bad as that makes it sound. For one thing, it rockets along at a tremendous pace. I never quite got lost but it was occasionally a white-knuckle, hold-on-tight and trust that Stross is in control of the narrative kind of experience. I probably only kept going because I do, indeed, trust Stross to land such intricate stories in a way that makes sense. Which he does here, yet again.

I don't think I'll go find the first book now - I suspect much of it is now spoiled, because I know who survives various difficult situations. Also, if it's like this one, I need a fair while to balance out the grimness. But I don't regret reading this one.

[Andreas · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

Remember, work sets you free!

If anyone of you doesn't recognize this idiom, let me tell you that it's a Nazi slogan "Arbeit macht frei" 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.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rec. by: A long, dark and many-tentacled history
Rec. for: Mums and dads and little lambs led blithely to the slaughter...

"Do you even enchant, bro?"
—Eve, p.122

Bloody-minded, sly, disgusting, and fun... Charles Stross' Quantum of Nightmares is a "Laundry Files" novel (or adjacent to that series, at least), and that's just how they roll. This one is a direct sequel, though, to Stross' relatively recent reboot of the series, that started with Dead Lies Dreaming. I read that one in March of 2021.

Stross makes it very easy to pick up the threads of his new narrative, but I would still advise stepping back to Dead Lies Dreaming at least, before you read on, so you can get up to speed with the characters who return to the stage for this installment—particularly the Starkey siblings, Eve and her brother Imp—and for essential background on Britain's "New Management" (no, not the Tories—this crew are much more effectively evil. The glass-and-chrome rack of skulls on display at Marble Arch that shows up on the very first page is but one grim reminder that the New Management has some very, very old ideas).

Beyond its awkwardly Jamesbondian title, I think Quantum of Nightmares does a better job of engaging the reader (me! I'm the reader!) and interweaving its multiple subplots than its predecessor, which I did think was kinda... flabby. I enjoyed the thinly-veiled dig at "the good taste of a dim-witted New York real-estate mogul" (p.82), for example, and Stross' use of the nickname "Deliverator" (p.15) for one of Imp's friends somehow didn't grate here nearly as much as the term did (intentionally) in John Scalzi's The Kaiju Preservation Society. Heh—and Stross explicitly invokes von Däniken's bombastic notions again (p.161), those "Ancient Astronauts" that were recently brought to my mind by Wesley Chu's The Lives of Tao, although of course Stross is taking the piss here.

*

Anyway... in Quantum of Nightmares we've got Mary (MacCandless, not Poppins), who's just starting a gig as nanny for the four rather precocious upper-class children of one of England's premier, erm, power couples, despite being nearly totally unsuited to the job. From an unrelated review I ran across on Goodreads:

If someone offered me the choice between taking a long road trip with a couple of kids or being murdered by the mob, I’d have to really think it over.
—Kemper, on a book called November Road

Mary's driving skills are portrayed inconsistently, but other than that I found very little to nitpick.

We've got Eve, whose highly-polished corporate façade is being severely stressed by having to deal with the sudden disappearance of her boss (and rather more than boss) Rupert de Montfort Bigge.

And we have poor Amy, an underling in the Human Resources department for the "Chickentown" branch of the FlavrsMart grocery chain—the pilot store for some really innovative ideas in 3D-printed meat production.

I suspect that no one at the FDA has encountered this book, given the agency's recent approval for lab-grown meat. And... don't ever let Portland's less, erm, compassionate city leaders get a look at FlavrsMart's muppet workforce, either...

"{...} Jennifer put it all together with the body stockings and the novelty ball gags. I thought she was joking at first because, I mean, really? Who'd be willing to work like that? But it turns out—" Amy swallowed—"lots of people are willing to work like that."
—p.128

Amy gets to preside over, or at least bear witness to, some of Quantum of Nightmares's most disgusting bits. If you weren't already at least vegan-adjacent before reading Chapter 7 ("Meat Market"), you'll be much farther along that path afterward.

Don't read this novel during dinner, is all I'm saying.

Quantum of Nightmares also includes the most evil SFnal callback I've ever seen, on p.322... a joke that almost seems as if it's the whole point of the book, or at least of this particular subplot.

*

In conclusion, Quantum of Nightmares is gruesome and entertaining—maybe a bit more gruesome than entertaining, this time—and while I can sympathize with the folks who have been vocally disappointed by the turn that Charles Stross' series has taken in its more recent installments, I myself find that, somehow, I'm still along for the ride.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Alex Sarll]

There have been Charles Stross books before which intentionally withheld expected rewards, like the deliberately dull (because realistic) space combat in Neptune's Brood. But I think this is the first time I've read one of his books and found myself getting quite so frustrated without suspecting that was intentional. I know from his blog that he's been having a tough few years of it, even beyond the level at which almost everyone's been having a tough few years of it, but I'm not sure that information would be necessary to pick up on a certain sense here of a writer treading water, or even paddling in the shallow end of an existing setting. Which is to some extent understandable: the Laundry books have had the problem for a while that as well as being horror stories and spy spoofs, they're also a satire of British politics and bureaucracy, which for some years now has been almost impossible to satirise. But the step sideways and a year or two ahead to the New Management setting doesn't really work as a way around that. Granted, there are heads on spikes at Marble Arch, but compared to the Mound that at least sounds like it has a certain savage grandeur; while there are obvious downsides to Nyarlathotep in Number 10, you feel he would on some level abide by his own laws (if not the laws of physics). This regime has at least given some thought to food security, which is more than you can say for our lot; hell, even food hygiene inspections have enough teeth to play into one strand of the plot, rather than being exactly the sort of red tape short-sighted kleptocrats are keen to pare back. Yes, there are some aspects which are even worse than our own timeline, like the idea of permanent transferable employment records, but even then I imagine Buccaneering Global Britain TM already has plans for something similar, or at the very least wouldn't take many pains to prevent an informal blacklist along similar lines. As for the supermarket chain where desperate workfare claimants are basically cheap meat telepresence drones for an AI, that would probably already be happening if only Cortana were more reliable*. Which brings us on to the next problem: the components of the setting don't always fit together, and there are times where it feels like Stross wanted to keep in lines he liked even though they jar with stuff established elsewhere. So: the homeless are being 'de-emphasized', which is to say the police are told not to bother investigating anything that happens to them. Plausibly nightmarish, but in explanation, they are contrasted with care home patients or incarcerated career criminals, who in their own way do contribute to the functioning of the economy. OK, except that throughout the New Management books it's made clear that almost all crimes are now punishable by death, so how are there still career criminals?

More generally, there are now a lot of different bits and bobs bumping around. The previous book, Dead Lies Dreaming, was based around a be gay do crime riff on Peter Pan; he's still knocking around, likewise his high-powered sister and the thief-taker Wendy. Who is now undercover in the sinister supermarket doing the workfare drones, which was being lined up for a takeover by the sister's boss, who turns out not to have been quite so thoroughly seen off as we'd hoped in the first volume. But on top of that there's a criminal Mary Poppins trying to kidnap four superpowered children whose antics rarely feel as entertaining as they ought, who swears in that slightly forced compound "Fuckstain pissbollocks" kind of way which feels like a distinctly British middle class tic, and who is described within a few pages by multiple characters as resembling Missy from Doctor Who, as if Stross is unsure whether his not exactly oversubtle characterisation is getting the resemblance across. Tying in to a general issue where the reference points, leaving aside Lovecraft and classic children's literature, all seem to derive from a fairly narrow band of stuff that people like me like (Squirrel Girl, Aliens, Adventure Time, Laibach, Lemony Snicket, Mitchell & Webb) and which, compared to the weird shit earlier Laundry books would drag in (Roman von Ungern-Sternberg! The Kettenkrad!) can't help but feel like pandering. Yeah, there's some nice integration of dark magic with sneaky legal-financial manoeuvres such as we see the masters of our own world use, but even that feels like coasting after the similar but more effective tricks in the previous volume, let alone Max Gladstone's Craft books – though admittedly the latter did tend to let themselves down at the last by having their skull-faced occult CEOs prove more receptive to appeals to basic human decency than the flesh-faced, allegedly human CEOs over here. The story never seems to get much further than reminding us that mechanically recovered meat is icky, that you should never trust HR, and that unfettered capitalism is not very nice; even once the big, evil scheme is revealed, it's close enough to the bounds of plausibility that I couldn't muster much shock. The big Hollywood showdown is quite fun, at least, though it gives even more sign than the rest of the book of having been written and/or edited in a rush: there are sentences where one substituted word could have made them much clearer; bits where POV characterisation seems deeply shaky (a kid thinking in terms of "arterial carmine"?); 'a brace' is used to mean four rather than a pair. Enough shit blows up to leave me just about content by the epilogue, but I'm not sure I would have made it that far were I not already 10+ books deep in the setting and with only a couple more to go. Hopefully those closing volumes will merit more enthusiasm from both writer and reader.

*I'm not sure whether it's meant to come as any surprise later in the book where it's revealed that the computer is actually possessed, but I can't consider that a spoiler; it was obvious to me from the off, simply because the damned things actually work.

[Verity Halliday · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

My initial reaction to the "New Management" spin-off series was a mixed bag. It certainly demonstrated that there was still "life" in Stross' basic concept, but I wasn't quite sold on this new collection of characters who labored in the shadow of Britain's new eldritch overlord. Well, this installment was truly a blast, as the gang introduced in "Dead Lies Dreaming," particularly Eve Starkey, have discovered that their problems have only just begun. While Eve needs to truly free herself from the snares of her erstwhile employer, several new characters are introduced. One, Amy Sullivan, is the long-suffering subordinate of her uber-blonde boss, who just happens to be a cult priestess. The other is one Mary McCandless, who "volunteered" for the job of kidnapping the children of two high-profile super-powered cops; nothing could possibly go wrong with that! The point being is that all three of these arcs come together in the best set-piece climax that Stross has come up with since "The Nightmare Stacks." I'm now looking forward with a lot of enthusiasm to "Season of Skulls."

I would note that in this book Stross is layering on the body horror as thickly as he did in "Equoid." Don't read before sitting down to your main meal of the day.

[Selby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Utterly gruesome, probably the most horrific of Stross’s Laundry series. Also a lot of fun

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a riot! Sendups of corporate culture, toxic bosses, the meat industry and religion- what more could you want??!!

[Cale · Rating 5 out of 5]

And that's ruined the word 'muppets' for life.
Also, a warning - if you have issues with spoiled meat, you may want to avoid this book.

Stross expands on his Peter Pan theme of 'Dead Lies Dreaming,' here, adding in Mary Poppins and Sweeney Todd. But his appropriation is very much justified here; he's built a dark and cynical world full of terrible people, in which our little (but expanding) band of characters stumble into three separate plots that come together in a massive (if a bit abruptly ended) conclusion. There's lots of action, dark thoughts, darker humor (I would love to see a Terrortots Special), and things that make you worry about Stross' mental well-being.
Eve, Wendy, and Game Boy are the main viewpoint characters (along with some new individuals), and they get more development here (especially Game Boy), which definitely helps things along.
My only minor nitpicks are that the timeline within chapters is a bit scattered between the plotlines, and again the final conflict ends a bit abruptly (although given the characters involved, it does make sense). Dead Lies Dreaming is required reading before this, but the rest of the Laundry Files isn't (although definitely worth reading for their own value).
Ultimately, I think this is a step up from Dead Lies Dreaming - I may have read that one too fast. But I took my time on this one and was well rewarded. You will be too. You just might want to avoid meat for a bit afterward.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially I thought this might be a Laundryverse pastiche too far as the opening scenes were too familiar. But it coheres into an entertaining and frankly disgusting tale. Stross's skill with contemporary lingo and unsubtle satire is evident.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I hope that let Charlie get a few things out of his system. This book is fun, macabre, and sizzling with not-really-repressed rage.

[Paul Bard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the clearest discussion you will read of what this book actually IS of all the reviews. Hold tight.

It’s now clear that Charles Stross is, as a Jewish writer, using Harold Bloom style agonist rhetoric to falsely subvert/corrupt the Mary Poppins story in this book just as he corrupted the Peter Pan story with the first book.

It’s not a lovecraftian corruption - that’s marketing - as it is a traditional lurianic qabbalistic corruption, where instead of being motivated by the honor and nobility of the light, characters are driven by resistance to darkness.

Resistance is key because it is a specifically Marxist-Jewish narrative of being the innocent victim of the Man. All the characters in both novels are innocent oppressed minorities just trying to make a living and love. We have Strong female diverse leads, trans and lgbt Representation, and as antagonists we have evil dead white men, religion, politics, and their stories like Peter Pan and Mary Poppins.

So Charles Stross corrupts these stories by making them horrific, gross, sordid and demonic and putting them at the service of the innocent minority leads against the evil dead white men. It’s Qaballah to the core.

So a very interesting novel. I appreciated the gross out and horror elements for their forthright demonism. The nihilistic and materialistic angle puts his anti-human or transhuman despairing past work like Accelerando in a new light.

Because the future is bright and good and true, and these false narratives can’t replace the innocent loveliness of Mary Poppins and Peter Pan, nor the inspiring future ahead for humanity.

edit- it also makes clear where Harold Bloom errs. The Western Canon not a struggle. The Western Canon a family sharing their wins. And he’s not part of it.

[Aidan · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Peter Tillman]

No paper copy as of 3/27/23. SLO has an ebook. Maybe?? No, still not planning on it, after the horrible #1. See my review of that one, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Stross has a crib sheet for this one posted at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-...
Sample:
"It's a third of a century since I worked retail, but it's an experience that lingers like the world's worst hangover. And back then, we didn't have ubiquitous monitoring and wireless headsets telling us where to go and what to do (although there was definitely CCTV everywhere, even in the mid-80s). It didn't take much effort to extrapolate where the most inhumane and dehumanizing retail practices were heading and dial them up a little. The horrendous conditions of workfare employees are not that far removed from those inflicted on agricultural gang workers ...."
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Bring back the Private Notes page!!

[Kimberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Charlie Stross, and loved all the laundry Files books. I love the world and the people and the edginess of the magic and stories that Mr. Stross has created. But this book, (the second under New Management) was just too much for me to enjoy. I hate that, because I really enjoy the main characters and want to know more about them and what they get up to next.

Much of the writing and dialog are, as always with Mr. Stross, funny, engaging, and bringing an unexpected picture to mind. I laugh out loud, save some quotes, totally enjoy so much of the writing. But the subject / dystopian world we are now in really give me pause. I am hoping for more fun in his next installment.

[Peter Hollo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Laundry books have been my favourite Charlie series for a good while, and when Dead Lies Dreaming came along I felt like it was a step up. Although my love for Charlie goes waaaaay back, he's always had a habit of filling the mouths and minds of his characters -regardless of gender, age or background - with "Charlie-speak", that sardonic know-it-all tech nerd voice. I feel like he's gotten better in the last few years, and I particularly feel like the characters in the New Management books are impressively well-rounded and varied.
For me this was a hugely fun caper and makes me intrigued for what the third book will have in store.

(That said, I'm also keen for Charlie to get back to the main Laundry storyline...)

[KaldonAngorm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Más tirando a 3,5 que a 4 pero bueno, al final me ha enganchado bastante.

Aunque los personas de Laundry Files me gusten muchísimo más en estos hay gente que tb están muy bien, como Eve.

Me ha pasado como con el anterior de "new management" y es que la primera mitad del libro se me ha hecho muy pesada, con muchas tramas inconexas que si bien se van juntando, pondrían terminar mejor si no se fuese tanto por las ramas al principio.

A ver si tenemos algo más de Bob en un futuro próximo.

[David C Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stross’ Merchant series has (apparently) ended but the Laundry Files ticks on. Basically national security plus witchcraft, alternate time lines, necromancy and paranormal humans with extra powers. The real subject is work and bureaucracy and Stross is very good at the Corpspeak, euphemisms, agendas and action items of post modern, privatized neo liberal society. This one is not a continuation of others in the series as the takeover of a mid level shopping chain by the Bigge Corporation is a cover for a religious cult and an extermination/slave labor plot. The kids and young adults are a little annoying but arright in the end. The action is pretty frenetic and you probably shouldn’t read this if you don’t want to know how sausage (sic) is made.

[Doctor Science · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to downgrade my rating from 4 stars, because it REALLY needs an emesis warning. Not just in the text--I had to take a few breaks to get my stomach under control. There's such a thing as "too vivid".

Aside from that, the plot threads & POV characters work really well, moving together from all directions to a Boss Fight conclusion, very satisfying.

I'm not 100% sure this series is a dystopia. Yeah, sure, Eldritch Evil has broken through & had putrescent babies with late-state capitalism. BUT: the world of the New Management is *not* ordered around racism, sexism, queerphobia, and antisemitism...so it's kinda utopian, in a way? And New Management might do something about climate change, so .... I'm not saying there aren't plenty downsides! But -- *gestures around*

[Roumen Ganeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is awesome! All the characters are great and I would like to know more about each of them, even the Terrorpods. The action is great and comes together nicely in the end - like any middle book ina trilogy, but in a good way. Keep'em coming!

[Hannah Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delighted by the intersection of stories coming together. An excellent way of having Rupert return that I would never have guessed.

[Noémie J. Crowley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now this is very fun and cool and whimsy but also strangely gorey too and it was a very nice book, that took way too long for me to read because for some reason my head wasn't too much into it, but I had fun mostly! The characters are all so nevrotic and depressed and fucked it's a shame there's too many to really go into it, the universe is wild and exciting, I love the overall urban fantasy modern vibes, even if I'm not too too keen of inserting real life stuff like Facebook or Ebay because it does not usuall age well, but for now it's good !

[Seth Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stross has done it again, delivered a sharp, witty and grim tale, set against the backdrop of a dark, but all too revealing, reflection of britain.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well huh. I wasn't expecting that much from this. This is book two of a spinoff series with a new set of characters. Normally these books get about 2/3 in and then go madcap off the rails. This one had no lead in. It started madcap off the rails. And really never slowed down. Horrible. Ridiculous. Over the top. And basically Mary Poppins. And meat puppets. It made a leaked supreme court ruling look sensical, like just another item in a crazy world. Except one of these worlds is fictional horror.