The Atrocity Archives by Charles StrossMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I might have read "The Concrete Jungle" 14 years ago but I don't recall it. In the end I enjoyed both of the stories, but overall I can handle Stross pretty well. I love hard, full-on geeky SF and he scratches that itch here. The afterword is very helpful for those of us that like to analyze writing in these reviews. He draws parallels between his work and others that treat mathematics as magic, or as a connection to other universes.
The series is humorous, but it's both dry and dark. There's a certain density to his writing that means I wouldn't read all seven of these in a row. The contrast of dreary government bureaucracy and utterly insane saving-the-world-from-monsters stuff is interesting but eventually gets wearing. I think he's trying to convey that Bob Howard gets a lot of satisfaction from his job even though it's painful on so many levels--perhaps because of that.
I've read other stories in the series and while they actually stand alone OK, they make much more sense now that I've read the first one. Not sure when I'll follow through on the rest, but I'll be willing to do it at some point.
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