The Nightmare Stacks [The Laundry Files 7], Charles Stross

Ace, 2016, 400 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 978-0425281192

Hello Laundry Files, it’s been a while.

There’s some heavy-duty irony in how my review of The Apocalypse Codex, the previous book in The Laundry Files series, began with an appreciation of how it was my favourite ongoing fiction series, that I stuck by it even as my reading volume was going down across the board, and how I was lucky to have one more book in the series on-hand to read as quickly as possible.

That was in 2016. Six years ago.

Of course, I didn’t plan it this way. Stuff Happened. To borrow from the vernacular of the series itself, 2017–2018 was CASE NIGHTMARE BEIGE time — a culmination of personal catastrophes across many separate domains of my life and I didn’t get much recreational reading done at all during that time. Even the laborious reconstruction that followed did not include much fiction reading. Ironically, it took a global pandemic crisis to bring a bit of personal peace and contentment, and the intention to renew with past hobbies. I played a lot of videogames in 2020, and oversaturation was part of the plan so that I would renew with recreational reading (on paper!) in 2021. Carving out pre-bedtime reading ended up being easier than I thought, and beginning slowly (with scripts, comic books, biographies of classic Hollywood crushes) ended up being a winning strategy. But if my videogame re-immersion experience of last year is any indication, I can expect a fairly long first phase of catching up on series/authors/styles, and The Nightmare Stacks (long purchased, never read) was high on the list.

I still think that The Laundry Files remains my current favourite ongoing series. As I’ve mentioned before, its blend of high-octane speculation, universe-wide scope, geeky sensitivities, niche humour and public sector thrills intersects with a surprising number of my own personal interests. I’ve bought and read most of Stross’ published output so far and I’ve never been even slightly disappointed by its entries… until now, that is.

The sixth entry in the series, The Nightmare Stacks, does feel a lot like the previous two books in how it fully pivots the series in weirder and more diverse territory — unlike the opening tetralogy that kept stretching the series’ original novella’s trans-dimensional horror/humour ongoing narrative in a way that spoofed British Thriller writers, the next three books in the series pivoted to include elements of urban fantasy in the Laundry framework, not-so-coincidentally moving away from the first few books’ narrator with the intention of creating a looser framework that could accommodate many more kinds of stories. At the same time, the series also set up the ticking time bomb at the heart of the developing narrative: CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, or the unfolding and possibly unavoidable Lovecraftian extinction-level event that is clearly rushing up to meet the characters.

But that gets put on hold during most of The Nightmare Stacks, which makes a book out of a semi-comic conceit: What if the Laundry was so focused on avoiding one kind of threat that it missed clues about another kind of threat? Freshly-minted vampire protagonist Alex is at the centre of the unfolding narrative this time around, as his assignment to prepare The Laundry for the coming apocalypse by finding new headquarters in Leeds gets him in contact with the advance scout for another trans-dimensional invasion force. But while the Elfin antagonists of this volume may feel like the C-team to the series’ main threats, they do have the advantage of surprise — by the end of the book, the long-awaited intrusion of occult threats finally makes the front page of British media with a mega-death body count.

While much of the book does feel like a semi-interlude (which is patently untrue once you get to the next book in the series — but I’m anticipating my next review), it does offer Stross a chance to take a breath, play with new characters, have fun in a semi-romantic comedy narrative (!), slightly reconfigure his universe and ultimately set up the next few instalments on firmer ground.

I did have a few problems getting into the book. It had been a long time, for one thing, and getting used again to the series’ very specific jargon did take a few pages and reference refreshers. I was also initially unsure about Alex as series protagonist, although that doesn’t last long: While the series’ initial protagonist Bob Howard aged out of his charming wide-eyed innocence a few books ago, Alex is still sufficiently low-level (but skilled at what he does) to be interesting, and meet challenges that can be appreciated at a more relatable level… such as meeting a cute girl that ends up being a trans-dimensional spy. On the other hand, I did have a constant difficulty staying interested in the segments written from The Other’s perspective — those were more successful once The Other got closer to humanity, but most of the time I was tempted to skip entire passages. I didn’t and only half-regretted it — which points at some weaknesses in the result.

Consider that the book’s best and most enjoyable sequence is a family dinner gone severely awry when the expectations of the parents regarding their progeny are simultaneously and severely challenged: a big comedy of discomfort and half-truths laid bare by a four-ring circus of clashes set around a common dining table. Meanwhile, an aerial engagement between jet fighters and dragons later in the book feels a bit perfunctory. There’s a clash of styles and interest between the novel’s lower-level character drama and its higher-level war narrative that doesn’t quite gel. It feels as if Stross found himself ill-equipped in trying to humanize the big events in the final third, having to introduce many new minor characters in order to describe the events, but without the connection that we have with the recurring characters of the rest of the series. It’s interesting to read, but it’s not gripping or enjoyable like the book’s other passages. It’s also clear that this is meant to be the narrative of a defeat: In The Laundry’s universe, the good guys are (so far!) always fighting to preserve normalcy in the face of intrusion, and no matter if this intrusion is stopped before it got worse, it’s still a resounding loss and shift in the scenery. The Nightmare Stacks ends far too soon to get an idea of the repercussions of what just happened, but it’s clear that plenty of cats have clawed their way out of the bag, some of them are lion-sized and they’re all hungry.

I also suspect that the book is sufficiently off-rack compared to previous instalments that I wasn’t feeling as much affection for the result. There’s a noticeable down-tick in the humour of the series’ tongue-in-cheek approach that’s not quite compensated by the result. The narrative here isn’t as strong on public service concerns (what with its protagonist being an unwilling civil service recruit), nor does it delve as much in the murky funhouse reflection of spy thriller narratives. Sure, one of the main characters is a one-woman spying agency, but it’s in service of a new and unfamiliar antagonist.

All of this should explain my somewhat muted reaction to the result. Oh, The Nightmare Stacks does nothing to stop me from getting the next book in the series — I’m still eager to learn what happens next. What’s more, Stross is too canny a writer to keep his series in statis: things change, evolve, inevitably lead to nuclear Armageddon and readers should be prepared to keep up.

More to the point, it’s not as if The Nightmare Stacks doesn’t have its share of good moments. The titular stacks are a collection of weapons accumulated by the British government to prepare for any kind of eventuality, both conventional and occult. I did like the taming of an alien invader forced to appreciate humanity when she takes over a bubbly drama student. Alex eventually grew on me as a protagonist, with his part in the book’s climax standing out as the best aspect of the book’s last third. We also get a glimpse at new facets of the Laundry universe, although the integration is clunkier than usual — an entirely new “DM” character is presented as if we already knew about him (Stross apparently meant to write a novella introducing him but never got around to it), although the closer look at “forecasting ops” is suitably mysterious and portentous. Stross remains an engaging, hip, compelling narrator (at least in those human-readable passages) and the book has its share of really good lines.

Ultimately, The Nightmare Stacks does have the advantage of being an episode in a longer series — even a temporary side-step has to be evaluated in a bigger context and may mean something else in the long run. Without spoiling too much about my next review, I’m writing this one while I’m one day and a hundred pages in the next volume — and I can reassure everyone that The Delirium Brief gets the series on familiar tracks, and recontextualizes The Nightmare Stacks as a crucial precipitating factor in a far more unnerving narrative. I suspect that I’ll eventually come to regard this seventh volume as mild bump in the road that sets up far more interesting later instalments.