I picked up this book, because I was interested in how a writer might write a first person account of being able to see the future. The author did a great job with that. He sets up a magical system where mages can use a single school of magic. They can end up doing fairly similar things, but there's particularly a distinction between active and passive skills. The book spends a lot of time showing how Alex's (he's the main character) ability to see the future stacks up against the battle mages that manipulate fire, earth or death magic.

Mage society in this book is a combination of imperial British class arrogance and mob family bravado. Inside of that society there are light and dark factions. Alex started out on the dark side of things but his conscious really got in the way. The end result is that he's an outcast from ALL aspects of mage society. He's a mostly likeable character made even more so in comparison to every other mage we encounter. He surrounds himself with a rather motley crew: a young lady cursed with luck, a severely ADD air spirit and an ancient seamstress.

The setting of the final act was a bit jarring after the adequately described London the rest of the book takes place in. In spite of the generic dungeon crawl plenty of action and peril led to a satisfying climax.

I noticed when looking up the author that he's also written a young adult (series?) book about ninjas. This novel had the continuous forward pace that's the hallmark of great YA fiction, with enough information about Alex's school of magic to shelve this as "hard fantasy." The connections between free will, probabilities and knowledge all flesh out Alex's skill. The other schools seemed a bit more "throw a chunk of X energy at what you want dead." I look forward to seeing the other schools fleshed out a bit, but based on the title of the next book "Cursed," I suspect it'll go into more depth about his cursed companion. I'll definitely be checking that out.

"I"m bluffing, but I can look it up on Wikipedia later." -Bob

This is the 4th book in the Laundry series, and the only other one I've read is the first one. In spite of that it held up quite nicely on its own. I love the existence of this series. It assumes a world in which the horrors Lovecraft described (and some other fantasy creatures) exist, yet are governed by the physical laws of the universe. Magic is a branch of applied mathematics. We view this world through the eyes of a low level government employee, who seems to be shedding more of the "low level" modifier on each outing.

Bob, computational demonologist extraordinaire, is thrown into a situation on foreign soil (from his perspective) with some pretty impressive partners in crime. Even though we have multiple point of view characters, the story is compiled by Bob and thus we get shifts from 1st to 3rd person (with occasional 2nd person warnings). It's a technique I thought was cool, then found annoying, but eventually accepted.

That sort of describes my take on the whole book. It was a hard one to flat out enjoy because of it's massive antagonism toward Christianity (and all religions for that matter.) The pace slowed to a crawl for a good chunk of the first third, however it moved along and a good clip after that point. This entry in the series seriously (for a certain definition of serious) explored the issues of living in a universe where the only supernatural forces are dark and scary. Having drawn the connection between math and magic, the worldwide technical infrastructure will eventually summon something apocalyptically scary and everyone in the know is trying to find a defense.

The super spy, Persephone, gives us a glimpse of what Bob is being trained to be. The bureaucratic fumbling over Bob's designation as middle management, handler, etc awkwardly fits the series but I found myself aching to see everyone in action at their full potential. Mostly I got what I wanted.

Bob's accelerated training is a big part of this and it'll be interesting to see how Stross handles the inevitable "hell on earth" he's forecasting. He does a great job with his central characters and the bits of insanity they encounter, but there's a distinct fog of war hovering over the rest of the world these stories are set in. This was a VERY fun read in spite of the road bumps and definitely makes me want to fill in my gaps in the series.


Ace sent me this book to review.

Start with a vampire private detective. Add a handful of interesting characters, zombies, possessions and a battle between good and evil. So far you've got nothing that hasn't been done a hundred times before... However the 1st person narration is in high geek. If you're the right kind of geek to appreciate the pop culture references then Hartness could probably narrate the phone book well enough to be worth the price of admission. I loved the narrator. I suspect your results will vary significantly.

I won't be picking up the next book in the series tomorrow, but I doubt I'll be able to stay away forever. The stuff Hartness needs to improve is the stuff that just comes with practice. Style he's got in spades.

Jennifer Quail has the makings of a great story here. Two well developed characters overcome ideological differences as they learn to use their newly discovered magical powers. And use them they do. Quail writes magic quite well. The four elements are splashed across the page in a synesthetic rainbow. Her vampire lore is well thought out and remains consistent.

Both relationships work well and the multiple points of view give us plenty of insight. The book is worth reading solely on the strength of the characters and the action.

However, the plot is “survive till the end.” They do. The characters and the action and the magic and the historical surroundings all set a big stage and beg for something more. Supporting characters tell us that there’s more. The wafer thin baddies seem to know there’s something more. The epilogue hints that there’s more. But it’s not in this book. Waiting for the reveal (which I never got) kept me reading to the end and I’m glad I did. In spite of its shortcomings, page by page it was a great read and I fully expect future installments to deliver the goods.