Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/06/marathons-r-us.html
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I’d have thought that finishing off the Laundry series could be done with a deathbed tweet, “Finally, it happened: Case Nightmare Puce. The End.”
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But with a series, missing a single volume generally means sitting out the rest of the series.
I’d argue that the Laundry Files is an example of a series where missing a book or two is not so bad. They’re all standalone novels. You would miss some details and the introduction of some characters, but Stross is pretty good about explaining things as he goes along.
Which is helpful, since I am sometimes not great at remembering previous novels. Sometimes I read them too quickly, sometimes it’s just been too long. Generally it will come back to me but not always when I want it to (i.e., not when I’m actually reading the next volume). I’m running into that to an extent now while I’m reading Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky trilogy; I read the first book last year, it’s essentially one big novel and my memory of the first book is slowly catching up to my reading of the second.
Both of the Merchant Princes series are essentially long novels, though, so I wouldn’t recommend skipping books.
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That’s less true of the last three books (numbers 7, 8 and 9) ,which definitely form a single arc (still to be concluded), and where you’d lose quite a bit jumping in midway.
IIRC, Stross intended book #5, The Rhesus Chart, as a sort of soft reboot, an entry point for new readers that doesn’t contradict anything in the previous books (well, not much, but Bob’s an unreliable narrator) but doesn’t depend on them either.
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As of the most recent book, that has arguably already happened, seeing as the PM is an avatar of Nyarlathotep who is planning to replace Marble Arch with a gigantic tzompantli.
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Yeah, he’s started a longer story arc so the books are more at dependent. I’m not suggesting it’s a good idea to start with the latest one, and it would be awkward to read them out of order or to miss a volume (particularly the last two), but it’s still not critical.
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A tzompantli? I wonder if it is possible to get a tune out of one of those?
I think you mean a tzompantli.
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“…the commercial reality of this kind of thing means that a large number of trilogies (or more) die after the second book, because the normal trajectory of a series to lose readers with every installment, leading to a death spiral.”
There was an interview with Chris Claremont in the Comics Journal back in the early nineties where he discussed the way that publishers helped reinforce that spiral - book one, they print X copies, sell X minus Y copies as planned, book two, print X minus Y minus Z copies, and you’re already to the point where you are incapable of recouping any royalties.
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Oh, Cory, I’m sad you’ve missed out on The Laundry Files. Please consider putting them into rotation for your very limited “read for pleasure” pile 
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I was just going to ask–so he’s missed out on ALL of them? That’s a heart breaker!
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I… don’t like his work, I don’t think, anyway.
Judging from a very small sample size, I grant.
To me it seems very full of Robert Downey Jr.-esqe winks and nods.
“See, it’s me” is what every one of Downey’s characters says all the time, despite what comes out of their mouths.
I find Stross smart dropping, like name dropping but different.
His works seem infused with the authors personal voice saying at all times “see how smart I am.”
Smart guy, I’ve no doubt. Maybe, for me, that message doesn’t need constant reinforcement.
But maybe that’s just me.
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I couldn’t disagree more. The Laundry Files are fun, but the really meaty stuff happens with his more standalone books like Halting State, Saturn’s Children, Glasshouse etc.
I don’t really love the Merchant Princes, though my wife certainly does.
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Alright, which one first?
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I think the Landry series is less important than his other series to start at the start. Sure, the characters are the same, but he wrote them emulating different authors.
That said, I stopped reading them, partially because I’ve never been into the Cthulhu type horror (nor any horror), that he’s making fun of, but mainly because I stop reading most any series after a while. Too many novels I want to read for the first time.
A different series of his I stopped reading when the nuclear bombs destroyed a civilization. I stopped reading a Modesitt series that I liked when the magical equivalent of a preemptive strike was used. I can’t enjoy that anymore.
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I get a lot of books to read, blurb and review – about one hundred times more than I could possibly manage.
You can save time by reading the Wikipedia page. If you really want to dig deeper, TV Tropes has all the spoilers!
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Charles Stross stopped doing that after the fourth book.
That would be the Merchant Princes series. I had a hard time getting into that even knowing that he had the same dislike of monarchism that I do.
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Sorry, yes, a tzompantli.
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Yeah, I was going to say that. He reiterates the premise of the series in each book for new readers, and he’s doing a pastiche of a different author for each (at least for the first four books or so), so they’re even tonally different.
Yeah, this is true, but up until that point it was quite easy to jump in.
The apocalypse was a forgone conclusion from book 1, though it actually got started a few books back.
A crime even!
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