The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

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Cover of Equoid

Equoid

expanded novella 2013 The Laundry Files

Record

First published2013
Original language EN
Work typenovella
Canon statusexpanded
Reader rating3.96 (5,164 ratings, collected 2026-10-28)
First-edition ISBN9781596066649

Synopsis

Bob Howard is sent into rural England to look into a possible infestation of unicorns, which in the Laundry's world are no fairy-tale creatures but the monstrous spawn of Shub-Niggurath. The questions pile up: why is the livery stable at Edgebaston Farm buying a hundred kilos of raw meat a day, why is his contact from the agriculture ministry so terrified, and why does his briefing file contain a deathbed letter from H. P. Lovecraft? Read in instalments through the story, the letter, written in Lovecraft's ornate style, describes the young writer's own encounter with a unicorn and the trauma behind his fiction. The novella won the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Novella.

Where it sits

Awards (verified)

  • Hugo Award (Best Novella), 2014: won

Notes

  • Novella first published online by Tor.com in September 2013; set between The Jennifer Morgue and The Fuller Memorandum. ISBN is the first print edition (Subterranean Press hardcover); the novella first appeared online, without an ISBN.
  • From the series record (The Laundry Files): The main sequence about the Laundry, Britain's secret occult intelligence agency, from Bob Howard's first field mission to the agency's end.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.

Sources

← The Laundry Files dossier · All universes

Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.