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The Nightmare Stacks A Laundry Files novel NA 9780356505343 Books

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The Nightmare Stacks A Laundry Files novel NA 9780356505343 Books

I SOOO wanted to be able to give this 5 stars... the concept of "The Laundry" books is still one of the best out there and the author is obviously very talented....

But...

If he writes another story that ends practically mid-sentence I'm going to SCREAM!!

This book has interesting characters, phenomenal background research, humor, horror... you name it... (it gets a little pedantic at times but that is forgivable)...

But I feel that it is a slap in the face to readers to move a story along at a great pace, get us invested in the characters and then wrap up the entire story as though the author had a stroke in the middle of a paragraph and as his head hit the keyboard, his nose hit the "send" key to his publisher.

REALLY?? The author couldn't have another cup of coffee and write 4 or 5 more pages to wrap up at least a COUPLE of the subplots or resolve an important issue or two?

I know it is popular nowadays in SF to create stories that leave the reader hanging... (for example, read "Asimov", "Analog", "Clarksworld", etc. for some great examples of fantastic writing... that END half way through a story!). I find that to be little more than crappy, lazy writing that tries to substitute artifice for hardcore plot work. A story needs at least a degree of resolution... leaving EVERYTHING hanging... (or in this case, opening up even more questions in the last few sentences of the story) is just ridiculous, and shows a lack of respect for the desires of the readers and fans.

So... get the book... you'll probably love it... right up to the last page... at which point you will:

1... Furrow your eyebrows in confusion...

2... Check to see if you are missing the last couple of pages via a printing or electronic copy error...

3... Groan loudly and probably say the R-rated version of "Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me!"

4... Try to restrain yourself from throwing your book or e-reader across the room...

Good Luck!


Tags : The Nightmare Stacks: A Laundry Files novel [NA] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Nightmare Stacks,NA,The Nightmare Stacks: A Laundry Files novel,Little, Brown,0356505340

The Nightmare Stacks A Laundry Files novel NA 9780356505343 Books Reviews

This Laundry Files story is told from the perspective of a minor character from The Rhesus Chart. Our usual hero, Bob Howard, is mentioned in passing but never makes an appearance in this book. The result felt more disjointed and less coherent than the previous Laundry Files books. Plus, this one suffered from some really obvious plot holes.

(Spoiler Alerts) For example, the 'vampires and compulsive counting' seemed at first to be a cute Sesame Street reference, even though there was no mention of it in the previous book. Then partway through, the compulsion switches from anything (like matches) to just grains of salt. Then later it changes again to only salt when it's in a circle and inexplicably, breaking the circle breaks the compulsion. For another example, the basic ending (the evil king dies and magical succession passes to the friendly princess) was obvious from almost the beginning of the story but the exact mechanism came from nowhere. Drones targetting a cell phone - okay. But why would the evil king want a cell phone and why would he take that particular one at that exact time? It was entirely too convenient.

It's an okay read but I liked the earlier books in this series much better.
Well, this is clearly the first half (third?) of a new story arc in the Laundry Files, and I'm frustrated to have to wait to find out what happens next. I hope that the new characters and plot arc developed in The Nightmare Stacks meet up with characters from the rest of the series.

That said, it's a damn fun read.

I'm going to focus on one thing here. I am a working researcher in evolutionary biology and genomics. I'm used to scifi treating my field as a magic McGuffin, informed at a Newsweek-level understanding. There are some really wonderful examples of scifi stories that hang on interesting bits of physics, scifi's main wheelhouse for a long time. The biology in scifi... sucks. The biotechnology is even sillier. If you want to find scifi physics as bad as contemporary scifi biotech, you'll have to dig up texts from the Edwardian Era.

That doesn't mean it isn't fun to read, but the biotech in books like Jurassic Park or The Windup Girl contain nonsense on the level of landing on the surface of the sun and having tea with the little orange fellows that live there.

It brought actual tears to my eyes as Stross nailed the technical difficulties of sequencing DNA from forensic samples; nailed the fact that mitochondrial DNA is what you'd get first from a genome sequencing effort; nailed what kind of evolutionary inferences can and cannot be drawn from mitochondrial DNA; nailed the logical next steps -- targeted (probably PCR-based) sequencing of relevant nuclear genes. I love how he placed his fictional excursion firmly within what the science tells us is plausible and comprehensible.

Charles -- if you're reading this -- whoever you consulted on the biology is telling you good things. MOAR PLEASE.
I SOOO wanted to be able to give this 5 stars... the concept of "The Laundry" books is still one of the best out there and the author is obviously very talented....

But...

If he writes another story that ends practically mid-sentence I'm going to SCREAM!!

This book has interesting characters, phenomenal background research, humor, horror... you name it... (it gets a little pedantic at times but that is forgivable)...

But I feel that it is a slap in the face to readers to move a story along at a great pace, get us invested in the characters and then wrap up the entire story as though the author had a stroke in the middle of a paragraph and as his head hit the keyboard, his nose hit the "send" key to his publisher.

REALLY?? The author couldn't have another cup of coffee and write 4 or 5 more pages to wrap up at least a COUPLE of the subplots or resolve an important issue or two?

I know it is popular nowadays in SF to create stories that leave the reader hanging... (for example, read "Asimov", "Analog", "Clarksworld", etc. for some great examples of fantastic writing... that END half way through a story!). I find that to be little more than crappy, lazy writing that tries to substitute artifice for hardcore plot work. A story needs at least a degree of resolution... leaving EVERYTHING hanging... (or in this case, opening up even more questions in the last few sentences of the story) is just ridiculous, and shows a lack of respect for the desires of the readers and fans.

So... get the book... you'll probably love it... right up to the last page... at which point you will

1... Furrow your eyebrows in confusion...

2... Check to see if you are missing the last couple of pages via a printing or electronic copy error...

3... Groan loudly and probably say the R-rated version of "Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me!"

4... Try to restrain yourself from throwing your book or e-reader across the room...

Good Luck!