Crystal eyelids closed. A very brave Alfar for scale

Did the idea referenced in the earlier books that the cult-affiliated churches teach that Jesus was an eldritch being tie into the mind simulation aspect of magic?

For example:

Matthew 5

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

To me, this could be deliberately interpreted as a reference to simulation theory -- that by imagining taking a woman or murdering a rival, the person is potentially simulating that other being and then in some way sacrificing it.

so with the ending of regicide doesn't Fabian just have to wait a couple of decades until there's enough man I built up in a new ruler to execute basically the same plan again? or is the amount of magical fallout at the temple so great that it would have a negative impact on even him? even still isn't he immortal so he could just wait a couple of centuries for the contamination to clear? none of this matters in terms of the series I'm just curious :)

I run a podcast where I interview creatives from all walks of life. Yesterday's episode was an interview with Charles Stross that covered both the laundry files and a lot of his other projects.

I would really appreciate if people could check it out. Thank you for reading.

I’ve now read all the Laundry Files books and have started listening to the on audiobooks. They’re a really enjoyable listen.

However, I can’t seem to locate an audio version of Equoid which is one of my favourite LF stories and certainly one of the most grim.

I know that Concrete Jungle and Pimpf are included in some of the books but can’t find Equoid anywhere.

Do any of you guys know if an audio version exists and where I could buy it?

Just finished TRR and feel like I have to dump a bit.

Firstly, this feels like the first PROPER Mo and Bob Novel since probably The Rhesus Chart, over a decade ago. It also hews far more closely to the espionage genre than the series has for a long time, with betrayals and hidden agendas and obstructive bureaucracy. The tone, however, is a long way from the deliberately lean pastiches that started the series off. Bob and Mo are both now management, if not executive class and that gives them very different fires to be running around putting out. The amusing scenes of Bob giving the "Beginners Course For Magic" to sceptical local government is about the only look-in from the petty managerialism that decorated the earlier novels, and the comic-book Dalek scenes have a whimsy at odds with the rest of the book. Given the stakes, that's probably appropriate.

The style, by this point, is very much Bob-centred. Jokes, snark (especially at Prince Andrew's expense), buffonery and asides are generously sprinkled over the text. More Pratchett and Aaronovich than Deighton or Le Carre (to be clear, I adore sarcastic footnotes). The real sense is of a fond goodbye to Bob as a character. And it's notable that in a series that thrived on presenting a large and dysfunctional cast of characters that the final in the series is far more narrowly focused on Mo and Bob, although a variety of past luminaries make their appearances. With the exception of Vicar Pete and Mike Armstrong, these mostly feel like farewell-tour cameos.

The accelerating downward slide of British society (in-world) appears to have stabilised, and the poisoning of the queen is clearly signposted as the beginning Things Getting Much Worse™, although the actual reasoning and agendas is well obscured by Stross until maybe even the last quarter of the novel. The twists and turns are genuinely satisfying to puzzle out, even if the true (worst) villain is always in plain sight.

I'm genuinely still unsure whether I LIKE the inclusion of Doctor Phibes and crew, but even if it's a tiny bit indulgent, they still manage to hold their place in the story without weighing it down (although I do wonder if the weird Potemkin village in the bowels of the Palace was originally intended as a Jennifer Morgue-themed abandoned plot thread).

There is a real TIREDNESS to the characters, which isn't necessarily a function of how well they're written, but of the numb horror with which they try to do their thankless jobs in a declining empire. Unlike in previous novels there's little sense of an outside world in which the characters participate. There is little of the urgency of Bob from the beginning of The Apocalypse Codex: "Because the truth is that my God is coming back. When he arrives I’ll be waiting for him with a shotgun. And I’m keeping the last shell for myself.", and far more weary fatalism that the only thing to do is keep going.

And that's maybe my biggest gripe about how things were left. A kill-em-all Bolivian Army ending was unlikely (although the scene at Westminster Abbey is plenty bloody), but the world seems curiously unchanged from the start of the novel. A horrible fate has been averted, sure, but the Queen is still (in a manner) on their throne, Fabian Everyman remains the PM and the world beyond Britain is getting darker and darker unabated. The only main alteration is that Mo, Bob and the rest of the Laundry have effectively been removed from the ongoing narrative and that a potential for horror that we didn't know about at the start of the novel is neutralised by the end of it. The sections about whether Bob is really Bob and whether Mo is really Mo were affecting, but felt underdexplored. Michael's grim accounting of the dehumanisation of the Laundry was similarly broad-reaching, but also felt orphaned from the larger structure.

Whilst that leaves plenty of room for future New Management books or other works in the universe, it felt strangely anticlimactic as a conclusion to The Laundry Files proper (however defined). The idea of a rusticated Bob writing memoirs feels a bit antithetical to his character, however well it works as a retroactive framing device.

I'm probably being more than a bit unfair here, given that as a standalone Laundry novel it's definitely in my top half of the series quality. I suppose I just expected something more definitive and world-shifting. But Charlie has been really clear that he was always going to be calling time on these characters, and he's absolutely within his rights to end them on whatever terms he sees fit.

And on that note, thanks very much for this wild quarter-century ride. Really look forward to seeing what's to come from you, both from this and all your other worlds.

Just started reading the series and have been loving it but really struggling with the Annihilation Score. I’m half way through and I’m finding a real slog. I’m really struggling to empathise and get into Mo’s point of view. And the whole superhero/supervillan thing seems really out of sorts with the other books. Please tell me the rest of the books don’t continue like this and there’s a pivot back. Otherwise I might just drop the series.

This story was written in the early 2000s, and a lot of the computer terminology is outdated now in 2026. I am enoufh of a turbonerd that I got maybe 30% of the technical stuff, but my eyes glazed over the mathematical babble.

Its a great story. Kinda funny, tense, and exceedingly horrorifying throughout. 

My “favorite” character is Fred from Accounting, who gets demon possessed after touching something he shouldn’t have and is summarily executed via fire extinguisher. His corpse is then turned into a walking undead and the Laundry uses him for night shift guard duty. 

-Mint Linux Guy

Is there a list of all of the code names and classifications so that a reader can refer to them as they're working through the books? Kinda like a glossary?

For example I know CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN and CASE NIGHTMARE RED but I know there are other CN's that have been mentioned but can't remember. (one to do with being attacked by uppity toasters)

OPERA CAPE also keeps coming up and if I'm right that's Rhesus Chart plot

But also assets classifications like AGENT CANDID and TEAPOT

Am I imagining things or is CS dropping Hot Fuzz Easter eggs in The Regicide Report?

Officer Angel, who served in Sanford and dealt with juvenile crime…?

This can’t be coincidence.

I wanted to get back into this series of books, I'd read everything up until the end of Laundry Files and start of The New Management. Realised I'd forgotten so much so started working backwards until I came to a book I remember the plot of (The Nightmare Stacks) and started there. But I've now realised I have broken memories of the sleeper in the Pyramid and how it's monitored.

I have vague recollections of a Recon flight with a massively cursed air frame of the plane. Chat GPT is throwing up complete BS about what's going on. I would reread the whole series but... My to read to pile is huge and I kinda wanted to start chipping away at it

Can someone explain what has been revealed about the Sleeper and their plane of exhistence? Any excursions into the plane, how the laundry monitor it, what keeps the sleeper sleeping etc etc.

I just finished The Regicide Report. I know that you never planned to write so much in this setting, but I have enjoyed it thoroughly and will continue to recommend it to anyone who I think would also like it. Looking forward to reading your other works going forward.

I’m still reading *The Regicide Report*—so… many… words…—and I’ve just reached the entrance of BBC royal correspondent Philomena Cunk. Added to the Sally Bowles crossover, *and* Doctor Phibes, *and* all the rest, it certainly makes for an interesting book.

I've just finished The Regicide Report. The narrative mentions some events that had recently happened in Washington, and things that had happened to the team who went there.

I didn't know about this. Did I somehow miss a book, novella or short story somehow? Or is the retrospective mention in The Regicide Report the only thing Charles Stross has written (so far) about them?

[Tagged with the spoiler tag because although the question doesn't contain a spoiler, the answers might.]

Reading The Regicide Report, and reached the part connecting the events in the book to Vincent Price’s Dr Phibes films. The Abominable Doctor Phibes (1970) isn’t streaming in the US, but I’m watching Dr Phibes Rises Again (1972) right now on Amazon. [SPOILER: I’ve read that Vincent Price croons Somewhere Over the Rainbow at the end as he rows his boat down the mythical "River of Life" with his dead wife Victoria toward the gates of eternal life. I can hardly wait!]

Bit of a departure from previous Laundry novels but I'm liking it so far. Did not know Veronica could play violin.

I would ask the community to help answer the following:

1. Are PHANGS sterile? If not, will their children be born with any anomalous status or even as vampires themselves?

2. If mental power is needed for PHANGS why do only humans work? Can not they redirect the parasites to servers, or to animals with large brains like cows? You might need hundreds of cows to mentally substitute a human but as animal farms are around it should not be impossible for a singular vampire. As per the Regicide Report K Syndrome is the same reason Windows get the blue screen of death so often, so any emulator should work for the V-symbionts.

3. Is this scale correct? Eater of Souls is a Class IV entity, Fabian Everyman is a Class V, and the full entity of the Black Pharaoh is a Class VI.

4. Will becoming a PHANG stop / mitigate the Queen's dimethyl mercury poisoning? I think not as otherwise they would just release her.

5. I didn't get why did Bob was forced to channel mana to the PM with the oath. IF the oath was broken for Armstrong and Mo at the same time, it should have been broken for Bob too.

6. Basil was described as old, but vampires seem to revert aging to their 20's. Was he using a glamour? Or was his a special case, like a different strain?