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    The Annihilation Score
    The Annihilation Score
    The Annihilation Score
    Audiobook16 hours

    The Annihilation Score

    Written by Charles Stross

    Narrated by Elle Newlands

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross presents the next case in The Laundry Files, "a weirdly alluring blend of super-spy thriller, deadpan comic fantasy, and Lovecraftian horror" (Kirkus Reviews). Dominique O'Brien-her friends call her Mo-lives a curious double life with her husband, Bob Howard. To the average civilian, they're boring middle-aged civil servants. But within the labyrinthian secret circles of Her Majesty's government, they're operatives working for the nation's occult security service known as the Laundry, charged with defending Britain against dark supernatural forces threatening humanity. Mo's latest assignment is assisting the police in containing an unusual outbreak: ordinary citizens suddenly imbued with extraordinary abilities of the super-powered kind. Unfortunately these people prefer playing super-pranks instead of super-heroics. The Mayor of London being levitated by a dumpy man in Trafalgar Square would normally be a source of shared amusement for Mo and Bob, but they're currently separated because something's come between them-something evil. An antique violin, an Erich Zann original, made of human white bone, was designed to produce music capable of slaughtering demons. Mo is the custodian of this unholy instrument. It invades her dreams and yearns for the blood of her colleagues-and her husband. And despite Mo's proficiency as a world class violinist, it cannot be controlled.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 2, 2015
    ISBN9781490647661
    The Annihilation Score
    Author

    Charles Stross

    Charles Stross was born in Leeds, England, in 1964. He has worked as a pharmacist, software engineer and freelance journalist, but now writes full-time. To date, Stross has won two Hugo awards and been nominated twelve times. He has also won the Locus Award for Best Novel, the Locus Award for Best Novella and has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke and Nebula Awards. He is the author of the popular Merchant Princes and Empire Games series, set in the same world. In addition, his fiction has been translated into around a dozen languages. Stross lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife Feorag, a couple of cats, several thousand books, and an ever-changing herd of obsolescent computers.

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    Reviews for The Annihilation Score

    4/5

    250 ratings11 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I probably shouldn't have jumped directly from the first book to the sixth, but it was on the shelf in the library and I was helpless.
    • 4/5
      My favourite part was her relationship with Lector, the demon in the bone violin. Although I also liked Mary with the. V (vampire) virus & Ramona the mermaid. Also liked the premise of people becoming superheroes such as The Mandate.

      I thought occasionally too much detail about bureaucracy that bored me. I also thought it had quite an abrupt ending. No final scene between Mo and Jim. And what happened to Mary and Ramona? Did Mo get back together with her husband Bob?
    • 4/5
      It's Mo's turn to be the protagonist. Nice to have someone other than Bob's perspective (including on Bob), and more details about the white violin was interesting. The climax, while suitably dramatic, didn't deliver significant surprises.
    • 4/5
      I really like Mo as a character, so it was exciting to get a book from her perspective, delving further into her world both violin-related and not. The plot twist at the end was totally unexpected, and I liked how it was resolved.
    • 3/5
      Still enjoyable, and the shift to Mo's viewpoint was an interesting change--but the superhero angle is almost completely obscured by the rest of the plot. Mix of humor and dread that characterized the early Laundry books a bit lacking.
    • 3/5
      For this book we get almost no Bob since he is putting out fires from the conclusion of the previous book. This starts right at the end of the previous book with Mo being the POV character. And it is a nice change of pace. Mo works for the Laundry and has a cover as a music professor which is useful since she wields a demonic violin that is trying to take over her and kill Bob.
      As things get closer to the end times there is an up swell in magic that causes people to believe they have superpowers. When Mo accidentally gets outed to the public on the news while trying to stop some new super villain she is put in charge of a new division in the government to recruit and train superheroes. And she is still working for the Laundry at the same time while still possibly trying to keep her marriage afloat with Bob.
      The book ends in typical fashion for this series leaving wanting more. Mo as the central character was good and now I’m wondering if she will be continue to be the main focus or will it go back to Bob.
    • 4/5
      Slight spoilers

      An interesting turn in the series, I loved seeing this from Mo's point of view. So glad I found this series.
    • 4/5
      This is the first Laundry Files book told from Mo’s perspective, but Mo as presented by Stross is basically her husband with a greater focus on bureaucratic procedure. I’m not sure that the world needed a Lovecraft homage where essentially all the action involves forming a task force and engaging in bureaucratic infighting (as the stars get ever closer to coming right and the apocalypse draws nigh), but it’s kind of hilarious to have one exist. Definitely advances the plot a fair amount; I would have preferred it if Mo had a more distinctive voice, but I’m still interested to see what happens next.
    • 4/5
      I liked this, but then I am an unapologetic fanboy of the Laundry Files. This book has Mo as a narrator, and her voice is very different from Bobs, which may not appeal to others. The superhero plot is just a thin veneer over the heavy Lovercraftian ooze, which is the way things are meant to be in this series, but I could easily see a three volume spin-off series with the Stross/Laundry Files take on super-heroes.
    • 4/5
      If you have not read the the previous books in the series do not pass go, do not collect $200, and go back to the start.While the other reviews posted probably tell you all you need to know to me, in some ways, this is the real culminating point of "The Atrocity Archives." This is as Dominique O'Brien's relationship with the Laundry and the instrument she bears comes to a head and literally threatens to consume her, while it turns out that other British government agencies have their own concepts of how to face the coming paranormal apocalypse. That said I'm not sure the sense of this being a commentary on Bob Howard's inadequacies quite works out, in that for all the point that he is not as good a man as he thinks he is seems quite besides the point in the face of the emergency that Stross posits in this series; particularly when much of this book is about disaster ensuing because of people who have the exact wrong idea of how to proceed.
    • 5/5
      This book continues the movement (beginning with "Equoid" and The Rhesus Chart) away from a spy-pastiche towards an urban fantasy alignment for the Laundry stories. From unicorns and vampires we have now moved on to superheroes. Well, that and policing, as the flip side of the same coin.This also makes explicit the overall arc regarding CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN -- The Rhesus Chart presupposed it to a degree, but Bob was dealing with the outbreak as a single incident. Here it's explicit: general thaumaturgical power is rising in the population, with the superhero phenomenon an effect of that general increase.Stross throws into the mix a change of narrators -- this episode is seen through the eyes of Mo, Bob's wife -- and that allows us both to see things from an angle we haven't seen them from before and to check Bob's reliability as a narrator. (It's a mistake to get too attached to a fictional character: I've seen online reactions from readers who are violently upset that Bob does not appear as sympathetic through Mo's eyes as he does through his own.)Stross does a good job of integrating a set of rather disparate concerns here: the narrator's nervous breakdown, the occult background of The King in Yellow, the ethos regarding superheroes (Stross isn't a fan of the subgenre, and none of his characters think that costumed vigilantes are in any way a good thing), and, most seriously, the scope and legitimacy surrounding the role of policing in the modern state. Where Rule 34 presented a sympathetic look at modern policing from inside the force, this novel deals with the boundaries of police legitimacy, the blind spots and creeping militarization which afflict the (modern) policing mindset, and with morally dubious interactions between the political realm and the policing realm.This is probably not a good entry point for someone who has not been exposed to the series before: a lot of the effect of the details relies on the reader's familiarity with the background -- knowing who and what Angleton is, who the Deep Ones are, or knowing Mo's personal history, for example. For those who are familiar with the previous works, though, it's at least as good as any of his previous Laundry books.