EL Archivo de Atrocidades

This book is the first in the Hugo-nominated series about a cross between entrenched bureaucracy and transdimensional horrors menacing our universe. I am an an unusual situation because my background made the stretches of technical jargon not too difficult to comprehend, dealing with computer science and cosmological ideas I had some familiarity with. It seemed as though the author had done a good deal of research on these and on how they might be applied to the occult in a way that was at least somewhat plausible. It's easy to understand the negative reaction some readers might have to the dry recitation of made-up scientific facts, though. It felt a little like he wrote these sections in love with some of the exercise in world-building. Still, the description of the big gun employed at the climax at the first story was truly ingenious, its principle also forming the basis of the second part "The Concrete Jungle" included with the main audiobook. I would expect that because this was the first book in the series, it might have had a heavier burden sustaining all this exposition than the other installments, which I have not read.

The book also establishes the first-person narrator and his situation as a rather unwilling participant in the business of monster hunting and fighting. He was the sort of self-absorbed technocrat with a chip on his shoulder when it comes to the strict functionaries he has to report to, all in a rather unpleasant, misogynistic fashion. I can't say that the run-ins he has at work in the Laundry are exactly enjoyable compared to his exploits in the field which feature all the action you would expect to find in a book with this premise. There is a nagging sense that the the antagonists are just set up as comic foils instead of real characters, most noticeable with the few women depicted. Everyone else is a British male and it felt like a better job of balancing the representation could have helped.

I would probably consider picking up another book in the series at some point if I had reason to believe that it was going to try to make some advances beyond this first installment. There were a couple of grand ideas that I liked which mainly served as ornamentation here which I would like to see treated in a fuller way.

This book wasn't really for me. It just didn't have a lot of the things I like.

I will confess that I liked the central conceit of the novel. It's basically a variation on [a:Arthur C. Clarke|7779|Arthur C. Clarke|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1357191481p2/7779.jpg]'s Third Law: that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I've always wanted to read a book that explored that in an interesting way. And I still haven't read one.

This book consists largely of the book's unlikeable protagonist explaining, in huge chunks of wildly uninteresting monologue, the rules of the universe to Mo, a philosophy professor so thinly drawn that she'd make a Bond girl look like a nuclear physicist, and yes that is a "The World is Not Enough" joke.

Speaking of jokes, this book is utterly bereft of them. There were places where the narrator attempts a sarcastic aside or a little light wordplay, but they're so poorly executed that I, someone who can even enjoy the comedy in such lowbrow contexts as Michael Bay movies or Netflix comedy specials, was left without a chuckle, giggle, snort, or even small grin.

The closest that this book has to a joke are its women characters. I was going to ask at my book club meeting whether they thought that Charles had ever met an adult human woman. Then I saw that he worked in tech from 1990-2000 (this book was originally serialized in late 2001, so was almost certainly written during his time in tech), so the answer to my question is "not very many". There are four women in the book, and all are caricatures. Three are so negative that the word "misogynist" would not be out of place. The fourth, you may be shocked to read, winds up getting abducted, then tied up naked, so isn't exactly a fully-formed standalone character, you know?

Anyway, no funny jokes, no women, lots of boring infodumps. It's amazing it eked out even a star.