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reviewed The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross (Laundry Files, #2)

Charles Stross: The Jennifer Morgue (2006) 4 stars

Bob Howard, geekish demonology hacker extraordinaire for "The Laundry," must stop ruthless billionaire Ellis Billington …

Review of 'The Jennifer Morgue' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This was a bit weird, and I don't mean the story, but the reading of it. On the one hand I read this funny, often hilarious, story about the nerdy protagonist being forced to re-enact a classic Bond (as in 007) plot and it's well written, too. Sometimes a little too detailed on the nerdy stuff ("looking for network interfaces", "corporate windows mono-culture with all the work-stations running the same service-pack") but since I understand all this, it's fun, also power-point bashing is good! But then something does not quite click with me. I tried to analyze what it was and came to the conclusion that I never once doubted the outcome. Just like in the Atrocity Archives the risk soon becomes too great to make the reader believe that the villain will be allowed with his plans. There is not even the option of a partial success for the villain. Also in the end I got kind of confused with what was happening when and where and who was still alive and what happened to the villain in the end, and where's the cat?

Also a little confusing: the totally unrelated - except for the protagonist - story about Neverwinternights in the back.

And why on earth or all the other realities was this thing named "Jennifer Morgue"?