Publisher:
Orbit
Reviews & Overviews by Rod Cameron
Publisher: |
Orbit |
|
Date: |
2006 |
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Size: |
418 Pages |
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Format: |
Paperback |
|
Price: |
£6.99 |
|
ISBN: |
978-1-84149-570-5 |
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Reviewed by: |
Rod Cameron |
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Review Date: |
November 2007 |
The Jennifer Morgue is a sequel to The Atrocity Archives (2004). The premise of the books is that magic exists; and demons and eldritch (Lovecraftian) horrors can be raised using mathematical formulae and computer technology. This knowledge has been suppressed from the ken of the general public. The result being that computer hackers and geeks with a love for demonology and mathematics are regularly forced to sign the Official Secrets Act and join the government’s occult intelligence agency Department Q the Counter-Possession Unit of the SOE, nicknamed The Laundry. Such an ubergeek is Bob Howard. We learned how he joined the laundry and met his girlfriend Mo in The Atrocity Archives.
In The Jennifer Morgue, Bob is as usual up to his neck in problems. Not only has he been forcibly and symbiotically bonded with a telepathic demoness who can only feed by devouring men on the point of orgasm, but he has to save the world by preventing a software billionaire from raising a nightmare from the bottom of the sea codenamed “Jennifer Morgue”.
On one level, these books are a humorous spoof on the heroic James Bond, and on another level they detail the hero’s paranoia at loosing a receipt – because the one thing worse than loosing a demon on the world is to have the Laundry’s auditors on your back! The Jennifer Morgue is very readable, and I have no hesitation in recommending it. If you cannot find The Atrocity Archives to read first, then don’t worry as there is little loss in reading this one first.