#67 Dead Lies Dreaming by Charles Stross

 

This is a spinoff of the Laundry Files books. A new reader doesn’t need any background to start these at all.  It is set after the events in the last Laundry book and there are some spoilers for the series but a new reader will not be lost missing out on anything.  One of England’s power brokers is trying to get a book to help the god that he is worshiping that is against the god that now sits in the Prime Minister’s office.  Rupert puts his assistant on the job of acquiring it for him.   She ends up hiring her estranged brother to use his magic skills to get into a bank vault to get the map to where the book can be found.  The book is in a shadow dimension connected to their old family home and you quickly find out that Rupert didn’t hire Eve just because she had good business skills.

Eve’s brother Jeremey, also known as Imp throughout the book is a frustrated director that wants to make his version of Peter Pan and there are tons of illusions to that book throughout the novel.  There is Wendy a former cop with superpowers that has been hired by a security firm to catch Imp and his gang for all the robberies they have committed throughout London.  Imp uses his powers to convince people to do what he wants. Wendy can make things appear and disappear but they don’t last forever in this world, Eve can move objects with her mind and other members of Imp’s gang have powers as well.  All of this is becoming more commonplace due to magic coming back into the world with the return of the gods thanks to higher mathematics.

 I’m interested to see if the next book and how the storyline will play out and if we will get anyone from the previous books to make a cameo.

 

 

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss