Season of Skulls by Charles Stross

Catching up up books I've read since last fall and neglected to post
about.

This is the final novel in the Laundry Files series offshoot trilogy
that began with Dead Lies Dreaming and continued with Quantum of
Nightmares.

Evelyn “Eve” Starkey defeated her boss, the odious Rupert de Montfort
Bigge, in the weird space/time byways accessed from her ancestral home.
She has reason to hope he's dead. But though she's now in charge of the
Bigge Corporation, she's not free of him yet.

Through the usual brainlessness of her brother Imp, combined with the
intricate feudal law of a tiny Channel Island, it would appear that she
was was unwittingly married to Bigge, and that proving his death and
releasing herself from his arcane bindings will take years and cost
millions.

Then an emissary of the Prime Minister, AKA N’yar Lat-Hotep—the
Crawling Chaos Reborn. arrives with an offer that she absolutely can't
refuse. The skull of Rupert Bigge is requested.

So it's off into the dreamways again, with visits to a strange,
colorful village where she is addressed as Number 6, a mental hospital
for troublesome women, and a carriage ride through the wonders of early
19th Century England with a Baron and a boy that might be the
reincarnation of Napoleon. All this to bring about the final
confrontation.


I have ;iked this little sidestep in the main series quite a bit. This
one was perhaps less enjoyable, but it was still fun.


Brian