Season of Skulls by C.Strass

     Season of Skulls by Charles Stross
Found at the SFPL-Main as of Wednesday August21
     I have completed reading a new Charles Stross novel
and it really holds your attention. This is set in the world
and in adjacent irreality where the Black Pharaoh has taken
control of the UK and sidetracked the personnel of the Laundry
to do clean up of sorcerers who resist his hellish reign.
     No Laundry Files personnel on stage but hungry musical
instruments are in evidence. Evelyn Starkey, Wife of Rupert Bigge,
Baron of Skaro and initiate of the Mute Poet (a Mexican deity) who
like the Black Pharaoh loves the power that comes from human sacrifice,
is the main character attempting to track her insane husband on the
dream roads.
She is his PA and runs his immense business for him but suffers
under multiple geasa, forced to his will and nastily trapped into a
marriage where he can force her will to his ends even more. Both
she and hubby are powerful sorcerers. He is attempting to get the
Mute Poet to be triumphant in a contest with the Black Pharaoh by
founding and directing cults of the Mute Singer in the past.
     This was very amusing and Stross has the knack for
drawing you into his work.
     This is set in the same Universe as the Laundry Files
where magic is best worked by computer as humans suffer
deleterious parasitism when they do magic.  Not too good
for the computers either as I recall.
bliss
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