“Stross packs this new novel full of hilarious in-jokes and frenetic set pieces, from underwater fight scenes that top anything in Ian Fleming’s Thunderball to a villain who makes Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Thunderball’s villain, look like the voice of sanity.”

“[Stross has] raised the stakes, taking his story well beyond any kind of ‘gag,’ both incorporating and transcending his material, in one of the most enjoyable novels I expect to read for a while.”

—Jonathan Strahan, editor of the annual Best Short Novels anthology series

“Charles Stross is a versatile writer . . . He is at his best when indulging [Lovecraftian horror laced with Cold War and contemporary high-tech espionage], where Arkham meets MI6. The resulting combination of chilling Cthulhoid monstrosities, Kafka-inspired spy-agency bureaucracy, and flippant hacker humor is irresistible, Lovecraft’s Mythos filtered through rambunctious gonzo language and plotting that is edge-of-the-seat and slapstick-intensive all at once. Expect to be entertained, extremely, brilliantly . . . [The Jennifer Morgue is] a pop-lit send-up of unique ingenuity and force . . . The revisionist climax is superbly choreographed, parody blurring into seriousness at just the right moments, and the customary Bondian closing segment, a last gasp by the villains, achieves surprising psychological depth. The Jennifer Morgue is Stross’s most entertaining novel to date and a metafiction of distinction ... astonishing.” —Locus

“The Jennifer Morgue continues Stross’s delightful style from the first book, blending elements of Neal Stephenson’s references to hacker culture, Lovecraftian eldritch horrors, and Tom Clancy’s spy thrillers . . . The plot of the book is genuinely intriguing—I read the book straight through in one sitting . . . There is fast-paced spy action with a generous measure of humor (much of it sidesplittingly hilarious) . . . The plot has some interesting twists and turns, and the book never takes itself too seriously . . . It’s a treasure trove of humorous quotes . . . [The Jennifer Morgue] may be the most fun book you’ve read in a long time—it certainly was for me.” —MIT Science Fiction Society

“Since Archives was great fun, I was happy to see The Jennifer Morgue.” —Analog

“Alternately chilling and hilarious . . . Stross has a marvelous time making eldritch horror appear commonplace in the face of bureaucracy.” —Publishers Weekly

“[A] gripping saga . . . perfect for avid fans of the genre.”

“Stross has created a story [that] uses the meta-Bond plot as a commentary on both its absurdity and its power. By doing so right out in the open, he’s masterfully concealing his actual moves. The Jennifer Morgue is a high watermark in whatever genre you want to assign it, and a lot of fun besides.” —SFRevu

“The Jennifer Morgue quite deliberately, and elaborately, draws upon the resonance of the James Bond mythos, infusing it with a Lovecraftian paranoia and a metatextual brilliance . . . a fascinatingly strange, rip-roaring adventure . . . [It] is definitely a different offering from the norm. It’s perfect for those who are always looking for cutting-edge fiction and boundary-stretching ideas. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even when I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on beneath the surface. Give it a shot if you’re in the mood for something challenging.” —The Green Man Review

“This is Stross’s take on the James Bond mythos, a wryly updated undermining of everything Ian Fleming held dear—and it’s great fun!—a Fleming-Lovecraft mash-up, blending the two incompatible universes into one contradictory whole! Superspy versus supernatural horrors . . . The Jennifer Morgue is a rip-roaringly entertaining homage, a highly intelligent high adventure bursting with geek humor and a love for the spy genre.” —SF Site

“The Jennifer Morgue is a work of metafiction, a playful, knowing, and openly self-confessed deconstruction of James Bond novel and movie plots, mocking them and reveling in them at the same time . . . Bob’s innate cynicism comes through in the first-person narration, which deflects the outright silliness of the ideas into the realm of tragic comedy and farce, and avoids the snake pit of superficial spoof . . . It’s a fun book. And it’s funny, too.” —Vector

“A delirious collision of the archetypal hero adventure, our modern obsession with flashy technology, and our perpetual fear of the unspeakable unknown. Stross wraps his reverent irreverence with a not-entirely-tongue-in-cheek warning: Not all our monsters are inhuman soul suckers or tentacle-faced alien overlords; some are auditors.” —Strange Horizons

“This is Charles Stross delivering totally enjoyable reading on all levels . . . The real delight in this book is to see Stross undertake a dead-on cybergeek-Lovecraftian version of a James Bond novel. Stross has a corporate-aged sense of humor, and his jokes are laugh-out-loud funny while his scares are shiver-your-spine scary. And don’t think that Stross has left out his vicious satirical jabs at the political shenanigans that governments keep getting up to . . . Stross delivers big-time. Monsters. Sarcasm. Computer in-jokes. Geek humor. Lovecraft—H. P. Lovecraft. This is to die for.”

“It’s science fiction’s most pleasant surprise of the year . . . Much of the action is completely nuts, but Stross manages to ground it in believability through his protagonist’s deadpan reactions to both insane office politics and supernatural mayhem.”

“A very breezy, fun, and imaginative novel . . . great fun . . . snappily written and clever throughout . . . recommended.”

“If this keeps up, ‘Strossian’ is going to become a sci-fi adjective . . . Charles Stross writes with intelligence and enjoys lifting the rock to show you what’s crawling underneath . . . The clever results will bring a smile to your face.”

“A bizarre yet effective yoking of the spy and horror genres . . . In The Atrocity Archives, Stross’s genius lies in devoting fully as much time to the bureaucratic shenanigans of the Laundry as he does to its thaumaturgic mission. What with all the persnickety time charts and useless meetings Howard has to deal with, it’s a wonder the world gets saved at all.”

—Paul Di Filippo, The Washington Post Book World

“Stross shows his versatility with this one, a playful cross between espionage fiction in the manner of Len Deighton and supernatural horror in the vein of H. P. Lovecraft . . . Bob is a thoroughly entertaining protagonist, and his suspension between the highest of high-tech worlds and the almost anachronistic Lovecraftian pantheon makes for a heady blend of fictional treats.”

“With often hilarious results, the author mixes the occult and the mundane, the truly weird and the petty . . . The world he creates is wonderful fun.” —Publishers Weekly

“One of the most compelling and intellectually engaging narrative sequences in the SF canon, the logics of demonology and physics in astounding tandem.” —Locus