Mythra P. Sattari reviewed The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross (Laundry Files, #2)
Bob Howard, geekish demonology hacker extraordinaire for "The Laundry," must stop ruthless billionaire Ellis Billington …
Eldritch horrors doing horrible things
4 stars
Content warning Sexual Assault
While I enjoyed this book, I wondered if it might be better if it were written by a woman, or someone more knowledgeable about the psychology around SA. No named character performed the assault. The USA's org for handling supernatural phenomenon sort of bound a woman, an agent of theirs, to a supernatural entity which SAed both hrr and the protagonist, via their destiny entanglement. This entity needed to feed off the lives the woman slept with, and the protagonist was forced to experience it too. This was a way to control them, keep them from going rogue. The book did get into how fucked up a scenario that was, but much less than I would have liked. As messed up SA by an eldritch creature is, I did find it a novel concept. I can get the two people involved having to suppress their feelings about the matter during an emergency, but they seemed to bounce back quickly. The woman was used to it, and the protagonist lost 2 nights of sleep IIRC but never thought about how terrible he felt again. Just the need to avoid having that experience again, no processing the trauma. This is less of a criticism and more me wanting to share my thoughts. I still enjoyed this book overall, and would recommend it to science fantasy enjoyers.
