I finished 'The Regicide Report', the last book in the main Laundry series by Charles Stross. (Charlie, if you're reading this, there was a warning!) It reminded me why I don't usually read horror, though. It wasn't unreadable but I was just disappointed.
The series of course is over twenty years old. I started reading it when it first came out.
1/n
So, it did keep me mostly entertained for over twenty years (the first one was published in 2003 in book form). Still I feel this last book, and basically the last few were a letdown.
Of course I knew in principle what was coming - I have read the 'New Management' series which is set in time after this main series and it's bleak over there, too. So, it wasn' t that.
It was just that it was so... bleak.
2/n
The series started as a Cthulhu meets Dilbert meets UK public officials, which was fun. It was some pastiches, and then found its own way, but it became increasingly bleak.
Which is understandable: it's been over twenty years and frankly the world's gone to shit. Also the author is over twenty years older and a different person.
3/n
Still, the protagonists having basically been dead for much of the series and now being just horrors wearing the masks of the original ones felt too depressing. Bob, when you ask 'are we the baddies?' the first time, you know the answer is 'yes'.
There was much slaughter and eldritch magic, which was to be expected. I kind of would have liked the 'good guys' (I mean the 'bad guys') to at least try to be good.
4/n
Here they just basically gave in, probably some books back, and didn't even blink an eye at the atrocities they were part of.
Realistic, in some ways? Yes. Fun to read? Not for me.
But that's a part of the horror genre. I'm glad I read them, I appreciate Stross quite much, but I'm happy (I think alongside him) that the series is now over.
5/n
Pare