A Conventional Boy (Laundry Files #13)

In Charles Stross’s The Laundry Files books, British spies combat occult threats and Lovecraftian horrors using bureaucracy, magic, and advanced technology. In the initial books, a reluctant techie-turned-spy battles supernatural threats, eldritch gods, office politics, and apocalyptic conspiracies. Then in the New Management books, the Elder God Nyarlathotep takes over Britain, reshaping reality under terrifying rule.

A Conventional Boy is a prequel‑like tale set before most of the series’ main events. In the 1980s Derek Reilly plays an innocent game of D&D with his school buddies, but gets locked into Camp Sunshine for it and stays there for multiple decades. The book starts when Derek escapes to attend a role-playing game convention, where he becomes entangled in the launch of a new RPG, which is actually a cult trying to summon a dormant Lovecraftian entity by sacrificing convention attendees.

This has all the hallmarks of the Laundry Files books, an interesting look at a subculture, an ensemble of diverse characters, and enough comedy to be able to ignore the elephant in the room: Lovecraftian monsters are scary. The story about Derek covers only about 150 pages. The rest of the book feels like padding with two short stories I’d already read (Overtime and Down on the Farm) and a chapter in which Stross explains more about the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, which inspired the book’s premise of gamers mistakenly being treated as dangerous occultists.

A fun but skippable addition to the Laundry Files series, but I look forward to book 14 (The Regicide Report) which is supposed to wrap up the main Bob/Mo story line.