Dead Lies Dreaming (Dead Lies Dreaming #1)

The first few Laundry Files were pretty good. Bob Howard was a great narrator on our journey through his strange world. The books were inventive and had a great deadpan humor. The stakes were generally pretty high, and the action carried through the entire story. The last few books, however, have been sloppy and uninteresting. Thin plots, no humor. Poor choices in POV characters. Stross has begun to suffer the fate of many series authors before him: after investing time in establishing the bad guys, he’s reluctant to allow the good guys to actually vanquish them. The “bad guys” follow the “good guys” back home like strays and become the good guys in the next book. This lowers the stakes considerably. The Laundry Files universe features a high level of ambient ambiguity, consequently the stories need to be larger-than-life. Recent outings have been underwhelming, and this is the lowest-energy entry so far.

No story. There’s a macguffin, and we look for it. Kinda. There’s no rush. We don’t really care. It’s not even vital to the end of the story. It’s just the thinnest pretext to drape the real story over: the introduction of Stross’ new fully-woke SJW Avengers. First they’re the criminals our nominal cop protagonist is pursuing, then they’re the protagonists and the cop is along for the ride. What little story line we get is short-circuited by a Deus Ex Machina and it turns out that the entire second half of the book was completely unnecessary, as were our shiny new woke characters. Oops.

No stakes. Not only is the macguffin optional, the Big Baddie who sets the whole chain of events in motion doesn’t really seem to care if the thing is found. There’s no sense of urgency, there are no consequences for failure. In the completely ambivalent world of the New Management, all of the rules about good/bad and right/wrong are set aside, which makes for an exceedingly dull book. There’s the nucleus of a much more interesting story contained in Eve’s flashback than the one that the book’s actually about, sadly.

Not recommended.

When I say the magic has left, I don’t mean the magic of the elder gods (of which this. novel is chock full of)rather I’m talking about that manic ironic writing magic that infused Stross’s early Laundry novels. Mr Stross should have ended the series long ago, because it’s lost its mojo. Half the fun of the early novels was the bureaucracy of Her Majesty’s Occult Services, and the McGuffin of a clueless IT worker becoming a DSS (Deeply Scary Sorcerer). IMHO, Laundry novels’ quality started dropping off beginning with the Apocalypse Codex, and he should ended the series with the Case Nightmare Green climax at book five. That said, Dead Lies Dreaming isn’t badit’s just not as interesting or memorable as the first four in series. Stross’s writing is tight, and he moves the plot along with alacrity right up until the finale. No spoilers, but I found the ending weak and unsatisfying. And the final explanations given to tie up the loose ends don’t quite explain. Not his best work.

This is in theory a Laundry Files book, but other than being set in the same universe, it doesn’t involve the Laundry at all, and doesn’t move the larger plot along anywhere. The book’s modelled on Peter Pan and loves to refer back to it, but other than some in-jokes and callbacks, it doesn’t have any real ground between the two.

Initially, the focus is on the thief-taker Wendy Deere, but it quickly moves to Imp and Eve, and she doesn’t factor in to the last third of the book. Imp and Eve don’t really grow or change in the story, and they spend surprisingly little time together, given their backstory and their shared trauma. It’s rote, it’s by the numbers, it frankly shouldn’t have been written.

There is one part of the book that stands out very clearly, and it’s the loss of their parents. That story cuts through the rest of the book like a knife through cardboard. But it’s too little and too disconnected from the Macguffin quest to make a difference.

Best described as ‘In the Laundry Files universe’.

… and really, Peter Pan.

Imp’s character never really develops. Indeed, apart from Wendy and Eve no one’s character really develops.

I have been a serious fan of Charles for decades.

This novel had the flavour of contractual obligation.

Charles, if you are going to kill off the main arc of the Laundry Files have the balls to just do it.

I rarely ever post a negative review but this book…
At this point in this long running and so far great series I was not expecting a whole host of new characters to be introduced. Quite honestly I’ve read about 133 pages so far and am not at all interested in this story at all. I wanted to find out what happened to the original characters and how they were coping after the aftermath of the previous book, not be introduced to yet another cardboard villain and bunch of plucky kids . Every other book by Mr Stross has written has been a fun read but this is a real misfire. I wish I hadn’t pre-ordered because if I’d read the sample I’d have known that I wouldn’t have bothered to buy this.
If you’re prepared for disappointment and don’t mind handing over $15, then by all means go ahead and part with your money but if you’re uncertain, get the sample and see if it’s what you’re expecting.

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