The third in the New Management series, Eve is tasked by His Dread Majesty the Prime Minister to deal with the revenant of Mr Bigge, her former employer. As with each of the other Laundry and New Management books, Charlie Stross takes one or more genres and runs them through the wringer; in this case, regency romances remixed with The Prisoner.

I think this may be it for me and the New Management. I didn't enjoy the previous book at all, and while this one starts much more promisingly with atmospheric scene setting and character introductions, once the plot kicks in it devolves into incoherent nonsense. Perhaps it's all a clever metatextual game, where Stross is showing us what it would be like to live under a sorcerous reign of terror run by beings far beyond our comprehension via a novel full of non sequiturs, important stuff that seems to happen between sentences, random poorly illustrated motivations and a great big whimper of a climax. Or maybe it's just not a very good book.

Always wonderful takes on previously known genres. This time it’s Bridgerton meets Cthulhu via the Prisoner. Perfect end to a perfect trilogy and I’m more excited about seeing more of these characters than going through CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN.

Oddly, Season of Skulls was one of three books I read in a row that featured vampires, and one of two taking place substantially in the late 18th/ early 19th cent (sort of). Not deliberate, but it did make me reflect on the spread of vampires in popular culture - they are such a fitting metaphor for both late stage capitalism and for manipulative bosses!
Anyway. The third part in Stross's New Management sequence, following events in the UK after its takeover by an ancient evil (any resemblance to recent real events is entirely deliberate) Season of Skulls focusses on Eve, a smart and ruthless company executive who has unfortunately found herself the thrall of a cultist and necromancer. She thought she'd disposed of Rupert in the Ghost Roads that begin in her ancestral home in Knightsbridge, but now he seems to have returned, and she risks falling back under his dominion...

Which is only the curtain-raiser for a frenzied, funny and rather dashing story riffing off the Regency romance as Eve is transported to a twisted version of early modern England complete with stagecoaches, highwaymen, ship's captains and a swarm of would-be Napoleons. It shouldn't make sense but it really does, Stross serving up the sort of convoluted wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels plot that characterises the very best of his writing.

The stakes are, as we learn high - for Eve, her personal liberty and identity are under threat, but for Britain and, indeed, for Earth, the event known as Case Nightmare Green accelerates. If Rupert isn't thwarted, the planet will be left with a choice of evil or worse evil.

I loved the choreographed incongruity of this book, the central action taking place in a sort of weird Regency version of The Prisoner and forcing Eve, a thorough modern young woman, to contend with the conventions and restrictions of a deeply patriarchal age (a theme running through the story as Rupert gained power over by enacting feudal law as a magic ritual, turning Eve into his literal possession). I thought I saw similar themes here to Stross's SF novel Glasshouse - with the difference however that Eve's "escape" only takes her into a wider world in which she has, literally, no personhood.

An excellent addition to the entire Laundry/ New Management sequence, and I have to say that in literally having an eldritch god assume the role of Prime Minister these books do at least escape the tendency for UK politics and public life to leapfrog the strangest imaginings of writers.

At least, I hope so.

The third and final instalment of the New Management Trilogy which takes the gothic Regency romance genre to another level.
It took me a while to warm to this offshoot of the incredible Laundry Files, but now I’m sorry to see it end. Luckily there are many options for future character development.
If you’re familiar with Portmeirion (I am) or a fan of The Prisoner (I was) then hopefully you too will love this. If you are neither, it is still highly enjoyable. Totally barking, but utterly Stross. Superb stuff.

Charles Stross cannot write a boring or silly book even if he tries. This is another thought provoking, enteraining, and well plotted story.
If you never read anything by Mr Stross go and read it.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Given where we are politically at the moment, a book which by its very nature is designed to be far fetched, still manages to feel, in its own way, plausible, could something like these books be written any time other than the 2010's onwards? Having read Dead Lies Dreaming but not the second one it took a while to get back into the world and I felt I was missing things but it didn't stop me getting an idea of what was going on and the excellent writing and interesting plot gave me plenty to go on with, I always like Stross's take on things and this was no different, sad this was the last of this trilogy but looking forward to seeing what he does next, whether it's just more Laundry files or something different!

“Royals. Doesn’t matter whether it’s the Old Firm or truly ancient, they’re all about cosplaying the good old days, back when kings were kings, queens were queens, and peasants like us worked in the fields. So this is about two hundred years out of date, which I’d say puts you right on the mark?”

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group U.K. Orbit for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Season of Skulls’ by Charles Stross.

This is Book 3 of the New Management, the final novel in the Laundry Files spin-off trilogy that began with ‘Dead Lies Dreaming’ and continued with ‘Quantum of Nightmares’. As it is an ongoing story I won’t say much about the plot, though I appreciated that Stross did a little sum up towards the end of the opening chapter.

In Britain under the New Management the Prime Minister is an eldritch god of unimaginable power. There is hardly any crime as almost every offense is punishable by death and people with strange powers are everywhere as magic as reemerged throughout society.

It was good to rejoin the formidable Eve Starkey, her feckless brother, Imp, and thief-taker Wendy Deere as they negotiate the dangerous world of the New Management.

As in the other books there are plenty of pop culture references. An early throwaway quip addressing Eve as Lady Bridgerton proved a teaser for the story entering Regency romance territory. Added to this are references to the 1960s avant-garde tv series, ‘The Prisoner’. These begin in a chapter titled: ‘You Are Number Six’ as Eve finds herself in an eerily familiar seaside village. Many characters sign off with the iconic ‘Be seeing you’ and its matching salute.

In his Acknowledgements Stross notes his recent interest in the Regency period along with the sub-genres of Regency romance and Gothic romance. As such characters from Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ and John Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’ make appearances in ‘Season of Skulls’.

Overall, ‘Season of Skulls’ is a triumphant conclusion to this genre-spanning trilogy. Stross has skilfully blended urban fantasy, dry humour, adventure, Lovecraftian horror, science fiction, historical fiction, and yes a touch of romance.

I was sad to come to the end of ‘Season of Skulls’ though clearly there is the option for more novels set in the world of The Laundry Files and he even says that there’s room for Eve’s story to continue. Hurrah! Mind you I still have his earlier books to explore while I await news of Stross’ next project.

I highly recommend this novel and the New Management trilogy as a whole. Be seeing you.

Season of Skulls is the third book in the New Management mini-series in Charles Stross' Laundry Files. This particular episode of the story sees Eve in an alternate universe Regency gothic romance but with Portmeirion (The Prisoner) overtones. It's bonkers, but makes perfect sense in conjunction with the other two books of the trilogy. Thoroughly enjoyable, I'm grateful for the opportunity to read it!

Brilliant to be back in the laundryverse. This episode came with all the swagger, humour and tangled threads of story that we’ve come to expect, all somehow miraculously twisting into a brilliantly structured story. Utterly compelling from beginning to end. Highly recommend this entire series.

When I realised the plot of this one would revolve around the lead being 'invited' to swear allegiance to His Dread Majesty, I knew I'd better pick up the pace. I mean, yes, here it's Nyarlathotep*, both PM and monarch of Britain in a timeline which diverged quite spectacularly from ours during the 2010s, but that sense of a society which likes people to know their place through "cosplaying the good old days" is very familiar. Granted, in many respects they have it better: he may hunger for skulls, but the Black Pharaoh doesn't stand for corruption and inefficiency in public office, and being a work of fantasy, the novel can posit outrageous ideas such as a little thing like fucking a dead pig being enough to stymie the political ambitions of an entitled PPE wanker with the right accent. Although I do like the little nods back to our own, grimmer world, like the determined deniers of reality who start muttering about 'crisis actors' in the face of incontrovertible facts like the devastation of Leeds by an elven army.

Alas, Season Of Skulls isn't always operating on that level. Its predecessor, Quantum Of Nightmares, was beset by clodhopping social commentary and internal inconsistencies, and while the situation isn't quite as bad this time around, those issues still lurk. The protagonist, Eve, spends much of the novel in a dream version of the 1810s, where Stross keeps hammering home that Jane Austen times were boring and smelly and rapey and not elegant like you thought, aaaah. In amongst all her musing about how rubbish it is not having modern medicine, or plumbing, or transport, Eve also notes to herself that "in the here and now they hanged pickpockets", even though it's been extensively established that the penal code under the New Management means the same rules apply in her modern day. Oh, and she's only there in the first place because of an occult attack by her undead boss-husband - an attack via a vector which, before it took place, we were explicitly told she had guarded against, those precautions seemingly nullified without explanation simply because that's what the plot demanded. Possibly there was an implicit justification which I missed, but if so my defence would be that this is not a book which generally expects the reader to have their antennae in sensitive mode, not when it keeps reminding us over and over that coach travel is uncomfortable and history is sexist and Number Seven is really, really, ridiculously good looking. Because the ghost roads version of 1816 is apparently sufficiently influenced by the collective unconscious for Regency romance tropes to have narrative power there, despite being so determinedly revisionist/realist in other respects. Some of the book's inconsistencies are little sentence-level matters, like the contradictory information on whether Eve is or is not worried about getting pregnant by Seven (or, perhaps, when he furnished her with the additional information which changed her mind); those might well have been fixed between my Netgalley ARC and the final version. But that fundamental tension between whether this is the past you've been taught to expect by glitzy adaptations, or the grotty reality, is too embedded to get out short of a fundamental rewrite. And even the big finale, running the end of The Prisoner through both occult and timey-wimey blenders, wasn't really enough to salvage this one for me.

All told, while I'd still like to see the closing stories of the Laundry Files proper, assuming they ever happen, I think this is it for me and the New Management spin-off (and this time I mean it).

*Stross punctuates him differently, but frankly one version in the autocomplete is plenty.

The next instalment in the Laundry Files The New Management blasts onto the pages, with typical swagger, humour and many cross-pathed story lines, that left me wondering as always how they would come together. I am continually amazed and impressed, and always entertained, by Charles Stross’ books. And he has once more produced a totally compelling read. Fantasy mayhem at its best. (No spoilers.) But!!!! Eve has somehow got herself in a merry little pickle between the New Management PM and Rupert de Montforte Bigge. Can she get herself out of the frying pan without jumping into a much bigger fire? Read, enjoy, and find out! Even better, read the previous equally entertaining instalments first. Thank you to Little Brown Book Group and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

Stross is (finally!) back to having fun in the Laundryverse, and I couldn’t be happier, or flipping pages faster. This isn’t to say Season of Skulls is anywhere close to perfect — it has rough edges* on every side — but its fun Regency-romance-meets-The Prisoner aesthetic and satirical brio make the flaws easy to overlook. Entertaining, trope-y, disposable, and blessedly unserious, very much in the spirit of the long-ago Jennifer Morgue.

* Often the product of shaky editing: I was pretty clear on the villain’s fiendish plan the first time it was explained, definitely had it down the second go-through, and really didn’t need a third. The same goes for a cloning reference that started out witty, went through Saying The Name Of The Movie, and…kept going, but not far enough to become a rake joke either. There’s also some paperback-romance ravishing and timey-wimey handwaving that might not sit well with everyone but that I’d forgive as just baked in to the premise. Stross unexpectedly treats the gothic romance genre with real fondness, even as he smashes it into Lovecraft monsters and spy-thriller conventions.

Britain under the New Management is horrendous and this tense page turner describes it well. Recommended if you want a good read. Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for giving me a copy of the book.