Charles Stross' new book, Jennifer Morgue, turned out to be the perfect read for today's 5 hour airplane ride from DC to LA. This sequel to the brilliant Atrocity Archives is a fun, fast read. Imagine a hybrid of Thunderball and Lovecraft's Shadow Over Innsmouth whipped up by a computer geek whose spent a bit too much time playing magical role playing games at renaissance festivals. The plot's a bit silly, even given the context, and the geek technobabble's a bit too thick for my taste, but the novel pulls you along at an incredible rate even so. Plus, the concluding tongue-in-cheek quasi-academic essay on spy fiction is almost worth the price of admission on its own.
It's increasingly clear that Stross has a multi-book franchise on his hands here that rivals Ian Fleming's. Now we just need to get Steven Speilberg working on the movie.
