Having enjoyed Dead Lies Dreaming I figured I would continue on in the New Management books and started Quantum of Nightmares.
It’s a brave new Britain under the New Management. The Prime Minister is an eldritch god of unimaginable power. Crime is plummeting as almost every offense is punishable by death. And everywhere you look, there are people with strange powers, some of which they can control, and some, not so much.
Hyperorganised and formidable, Eve Starkey defeated her boss, the louche magical adept and billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge, in a supernatural duel to the death. Now she’s in charge of the Bigge Corporation, just in time to discover the lethal trap Rupert set for her long ago….
Wendy Deere is investigating unauthorized supernatural shenanigans. She swore to herself she wouldn’t again get entangled with Eve Starkey’s bohemian brother, Imp, and his crew of transhuman misfits. Yeah, right.
Mary Macandless has powers of her own. Right now she’s pretending to be a nanny in order to kidnap the children of a pair of famous, Government-authorized adepts. These children have powers of their own, and Mary Macandless is in way over her head.
All of these stories will come together, with world-bending results….
This is a continuation from the first book and it starts within weeks of the last book finishing. Like the previous one it concentrates on Eve and her brother Imp and his team of “Lost Boys”. The first book took lots of cues from Peter Pan, this one takes cues from Mary Poppins. It also continues the story of Wendy from the first book as she has fallen in with and in love with one of the Lost Boys. The relationship between the previously estranged Eve and Imp continues to repair in the aftermath of her battle with her ex boss.
The story surrounding this books takes place mainly from a few perspectives, that of Eve and Imp, that of Wendy who is tasked with investigating a supermarket and some kind of dark goings on, and that of super-nanny Mary Macandless, described several times of being a bit like Missy from Doctor Who. These three strands come together throughout the story and all end in the same place showcasing that everything in these stories seems to be linked.
Again like the first one the idea of the New Management seem more like a background idea than an integral plot device though the cults surrounding this world seem to be a part that backstory.
Like the first book there was a lot about this I liked and it felt like there was a lot more story development on Eve, and I enjoyed the story about the faceless Supermarket, and there were hints of some classic sci-fi of the 70s and 80s.
The Mary Poppins similarities are played very deliberately, the children, being the children of the Banks family but the twist on the original story were . The character of Mary was an interesting one and it tied into what seemed like a throwaway character from the first book, in my previous review I stated:
“there were a few things that were brought up like they may be important or at least significant in some way that never really went anywhere” one of these things I thought went unexplained was explained as part of Mary’s backstory, so it shows that you can’t be quick to judge in an ongoing series.
I can only echo what I said on the first book for this, if you like urban fantasy and want something a bit different, both dark and funny then this is worth a read, having found Stross a little more difficult to get into in the past I’m not sure why now and am really enjoying this series and have now started on the first of the Laundry files.