The Delirium Brief
core novel 2017 The Laundry Files
Record
| First published | 2017 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.26 (5,946 ratings, collected 2026-10-28) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780765394668 |
| Internal chronology | 8 |
Synopsis
After the elven invasion of Leeds the Laundry's existence is public knowledge, and Bob Howard is sent before television cameras to defend it. The government turns on the agency, dissolves it and hands its work to a public-private partnership, a scheme engineered by Raymond Schiller, the televangelist Bob thought he had beaten, who still wants to end the world. Facing destruction, what remains of the Laundry allies with the surviving Nyarlathotep cultists and stages a coup, placing Britain under the rule of an elder god as the lesser evil.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Laundry Files
- Series: The Laundry Files core; position 8 of 15 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Charles Stross
Awards (verified)
- Locus Award (Best Fantasy Novel), 2018: finalist; Locus reader-poll placement, ranked 5.
Notes
- 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.
- Publication order, within the series The Laundry Files: position 11 of 15: previous The Nightmare Stacks (2016) · next The Labyrinth Index (2018)
- Internal chronology, within The Laundry Files: position 11 of 14: previous The Nightmare Stacks (2016) · next The Labyrinth Index (2018)
Sources
- Wikipedia: The Laundry Files
- Wikipedia: Charles Stross bibliography
- Reader ratings: Laundry Files series page
- Science Fiction Awards Database: Charles Stross
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Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.