Regicide? Schmegicide!
Charlie Stross has been dealing in the bureaucracy of the Laundry since 2010 and this is likely the last of them, not just the fourteenth Laundry Files novel. At the risk of assuming not everyone reading this will have read the previous thirteen, the Laundry Files is what happens when you cross James Bond with Cosmic Horror if 007 was a mid-ranking civil servant in an underfunded post-colonial kinda way. Imagine if your doctor’s receptionist was in charge of the nation’s defence.
Stross has always captured the sense of sclerotic ‘computer says no’ horror that we’re all familiar with really well. And while the Laundry Files is definitely blackly humorous by design it’s also locked in on the horror elements too. That it’s reached fourteen in the series tells you just how popular it’s been.
Having said that the series has most definitely come in two parts – the first being a focus on Bob, a talented agent masquerading as a bland man who carries the narration with a very dry sense of humour and a knowing resignation at how despairing hide bound bureaucracy can make you feel.
Bob Howard carried the first nine of the series. After this events in the Laundry world meant we got a second mini-series called ‘The New Management’ which focused on different characters.
Book 13 was a prequel of sorts and that brings us to this, The Regicide Report which is, by Stross’ own words, the last one.
I cover the history because it’s been going a long time but also because it will be relevant to what I want to say both about The Regicide Report as a novel in its own right but as a book which shuts the door on a long running series. For the interests of disclosure I should say I loved the original run of nine books – they ended on a spectacular cliffhanger that hinted at bigger things to come, perhaps even truly cosmic stakes.
I then fell out of love with The New Management for a simple reason – it was too bleak for me. Perhaps it was the perils of creating a world in which the cultists won. It may also be that with Brexit and Trump were ascendent, it couldn't compete with the unfunny horrors of the real world where it’s not bureaucracy that’s the enemy but is, rather, a longed for but definitively departed relative.
The Regicide Report seeks to bring all of this together and tie up as many dangling threads as possible and it does so by refocusing on Bob. We learn in the first chapter that the entire book is written as a case report (which was the original framing device) but it tantalisingly leaves out any news except that Bob remains active and capable of writing a report.
The story, ostensibly about an assassination attempt on Queen Elizabeth II, has more moving parts than a room sized computer from the 1970s and brings to a crescendo the long running arc of Case Nightmare Green – which asks what if a cosmic horror arrived and decided to make itself at home here in our world.
Stross is a great writer but I think there are some significant problems with the novel. The issues I faced reading it fall under a couple of headings. The first is one common to many long running stories that come to an end – the plethora of plots, stories, characters and events that need to be referenced, kept in mind and managed as a narrative is concluded. In the case of The Regicide Report the story itself has a throughline but it’s inevitably confused by references to all manner of historic events that happen elsewhere.
It's not a bad thing to be consistent; the book simply struggles under the weight of the previous thirteen novels and the world Stross has built. Because this series isn’t epic fantasy where the singular hero saves the world Stross gives himself a much tougher challenge – how to end a story which has had multiple main characters telling multiple stories. Stross does have a singular hero in this novel though – Bob Howard – and Bob is a superpower whose abilities are a little fuzzy because the plot requires him to be outmatched at critical moments. The weakness of plot armour is never more apparent than when you’re trying to manoeuvre people towards their final confrontation and when that confrontation comes at the end of book 14 it’s really challenging to get it right.
Stross gets it right but within the context of trying to smash everything in that needs some commentary before you close the final page. As a result it’s a bit messy, bulging with side notes and moments that serve to answer questions not set up by the premise of the book but instead by the legacy of the series. I’m not sure there’s a better way to do it especially as I don’t think this was a planned ending that Stross has been working towards since day 1.
The second challenge is more personal and it’s that after the ‘bad guys’ won earlier in the series and we entered the time of The New Management what had been a darkly humorous tale shifted into one of being absurdly dark and less funny as a result. That lack of humour in the face of horror meant the tone became much bleaker with no one able to ever, really, secure a win. The problem for me is that in the face of bleakness the absurdity runs the risk of doubling down on the hopelessness because erratic can veer into the nastily capricious pretty easily when we’re not allowed good things.
Stross appears to be aware of this, at least that’s my take on his writing, because the characters themselves wrestle with just this set of feelings and whether what they do means anything when the cosmic horror who also happens to be your boss is more heads on sticks fascist horror than well-meaning but monstrous patriarch. Coming as it does at a time when the world I live in seems as if it’s on the verge of existential disaster it makes it particularly tough to read about well-meaning people losing at every step along the way.
This need for absurdity to supplement humour feeds into my final challenge with the novel – the presence of characters from a set of horror movies from the 1970s. At first I thought it was a nod to these characters, who appear in a couple of movies that I saw when I was definitely too young. However, the characters from these movies are a central part of The Regicide Report even down to the point that Bob and his allies realise there were movies made about these characters who have now pitched up as real in the world of the Laundry Files. Yes it’s archly meta and yes it’s deeply absurd and yes the characters come from movies that were definitely humorous horror and so, on paper, fit in completely with the tone of the Laundry Files.
But they don’t work. I see why they’re there – because the other major antagonists are, technically, on the same side as Bob and so apart from writing to HR he can’t do much about them. In other words, there’s a big gap for Bob where his agency should be that can only be filled by adding in an independent party who he can wrestle against and whose actions can bring into relief the actions of the bigger bads who Bob will eventually need to face. I think that’s why it doesn’t work for me. It could be refreshing, wry and smartly ironic to have these weirdos arrive from the 1970s to provide traction for Bob to progress the story. Instead they become this odd narrative lacuna that doesn’t build character or a sense of urgency but really represent busy work for the main characters until it’s time to end the story.
All of this adds up to a novel that works in parts but which also struggles to find its way. It’s both tightly written (Stross always writes engagingly and the dryness of the text remains enjoyable both in tone and in structure) but far too busy at the same time. It’s that busyness which creates the narrative problems and it’s the world that Stross has built across the series which creates its structural problems. When you’ve established an all-powerful horror who’s penned in the heroes on every side it’s pretty tough to give anyone anything meaningful to do.
And so the Laundry Files end with everyone effectively neutered but still in the same places as they’ve been since book 9. With no one winning the only beneficiaries are the bad guys who remain in charge of the world and are free to serve their own needs. Bob presents this to us as the best possible outcome and, frankly, I look out the window and can’t help but feel a bit depressed at what that says about the world we face.
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Highlights:
- Bob Howard
- Cults, Mana Batteries and cosmic horror
References: Stross, Charlie., The Regicide Report. [Orbit, 2026].
