Review: The Rhesus Chart

Finished it last night.

The latest in the Laundry Files stories by Charles Stross, The Rhesus Chart tells the next story of Bob Howard, Darkside Hacker extraordinaire and apprentice Eater of Souls who works for the Laundry, the UK's occult intelligence service.

Without spoiling the story too much, the occult menace in this story is vampires (which, of course, don't exist), but as with any of the Laundry stories, that doesn't begin to touch on the actual situation.

I personally have mixed feelings about the book. As someone now-trained in Agile software development and on multiple Scrum teams, I found the Scrum (an actual group of characters in the story) to be disturbingly-familiar. Especially the character who leads the Scrum and speaks in buzzwords.

I'm starting to look at certain people in my company in a new light.

But I digress... there were cool things. I always enjoy Bob's true nemesis: corporate b.s. and matrix management, but otherwise I felt the story seemed to drag a lot. It meandered aimlessly for a while then the conclusion felt rushed and abrupt, if deeply, deeply fucked up.

I enjoyed it, but it felt a bit hollow next to the previous offerings. I'm hoping the next one is a bit meatier.