The Atrocity Archives

273 pages

English language

Published Nov. 12, 2004 by Golden Gryphon Press.

ISBN:
978-1-930846-23-4
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4 stars (15 reviews)

Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up with the endless paperwork he has to do on a daily basis. He should never be called on to do anything remotely heroic. But for some reason, he is.

4 editions

Fun series starter

No rating

I’ve been meaning to read this for a while and was pleased to find it delivered what I expected: an entertaining mix of technology, bureaucracy and eldritch horrors (you can decide if the last by definition encompasses the other two…)

The narrative is in Bob’s first person, present tense point of view. I wasn’t especially taken with him as a character, though I wasn’t so put off as to bail out. He always managed to have the skills or items needed to meet the challenges before him, or some associate intervening at the right moment.

The office politics were boldly drawn. I wouldn’t have minded more subtlety, a bit more behind the scenes manipulation and gaslighting rather than the (office equivalent of) straight-up moustache-twirliness that came across. We were never really left in doubt of the outcome.

Overall, a fun series starter.

Review of 'The Atrocity Archives' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

It would be disingenuous to give this 5 stars, because although I thought it was excellent, I'm fairly sure I should've done some preparatory reading before tackling this. Charles Stross has officially made me feel dumb. The complexity of the data in this book (and, if this is any indicator, in all the following books) is daunting to someone of my layman-level comprehension. Magic-as-math, math-as-magic, and I'm over here feeling underqualified to read this. :)

Review of 'The Atrocity Archives' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This is an odd initiative by Orbit: not a novel, not a collection of short stories but two novellas and an essay by Charles Stross. Looking at the imprint page, I approached the work with some degree of trepidation. This is the pre-Iron Sunrise Stross. If the aforementioned Dan Brown has taught me anything it’s to be very wary of the so called ‘back-catalogue’.

Bob Howard is the IT go-to guy in the Laundry, an organisation where you have to sign the Official Secrets Act before you can even know of its existence. Like most of the employees, Bob was press-ganged into service when his studentish dabblings with polynomial theory threatened to unleash enough dark energy to flatten Leeds. After months of boredom, his request for active duty is accepted and he finds himself in the type of situation that switches from uncomfortable tedium to underpant-staining terror in the firing …

Subjects

  • Geeks (Computer enthusiasts) -- Fiction
  • Intelligence service -- Fiction
  • Office politics -- Fiction
  • Demonology -- Fiction
  • Monsters -- Fiction
  • Nazis -- Fiction
  • Great Britain -- Fiction