Item: A Conventional Boy
Rating: 4.00
Author: annieb123

by Charles Stross

In A Conventional Boy, the fate of the world will depend on a roll of the dice... twenty-sided dice, that is.

In 1984, Derek Reilly was just another teenage nerd growing up in middle England. But his love of D&D caused him to fall afoul of the Laundry, a government agency tasked with suppressing supernatural threats. It turns out that sometimes ninth level wizard spells drawn on the back of your maths textbook can look suspiciously like actual magic...

Decades later, Derek is a long-term inmate at Camp Sunshine, a centre for deprogramming captured cultists. But Derek finally has reason...

Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.

A Conventional Boy is the 13th Laundry Files novel by Charles Stross. Due out 7th Jan 2025 from Macmillan on their Tor imprint, it's 240 pages and will be available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. The book contains 3 works (the aforementioned titular novel, and 2 novella length works, Overtime and Down On the Farm), + an author's note.

Fans adore the sense of gonzo out-of-control wall-to-wall hysterical madness for which the Laundry Files are well known. For readers who adore paranormal bureaucratic fantasy, this is the top shelf good stuff. For fans of Aaronovitch, Doctorow, Simon Green, and the other boys in the band - this is not derivative at all, but ticks the same boxes as the aforementioned. It's funny, full on chaos, darkly humorous, and absolutely full of malicious compliance and government incompetence, with the added bonus of an eldritch horror or three, satanic panic D&D groups, and stopping the end of the world. There's deep nerdiness in the form of a math/physics/programming component to magic and that the agents are really smart (and very very nerdy). Stross has a talent for sarcastic/exasperated/desperate deadpan humour and this is a pretty strong entry in a very strong perennially entertaining series.

For readers who are not already invested in the series, it's convoluted, but this one does work moderately well as a standalone, since it is a prequel and gives readers the backstory for Derek the DM (forecasting ops guy). The series is up to 13 books plus tie ins in the form of the New Management series, a bunch of shorter fiction (stories and novellas) and uses a large ensemble cast of characters, so it's a great candidate for a very long binge/buddy read.

Four stars. Recommended unreservedly to humorous SF/UF fans.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Reading updates

2 January, 2025: Started reading

2 January, 2025: Finished reading

2 January, 2025: Reviewed