Review: The Annihilation Score

Finished The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross, the latest of the Laundry Files.

CH3: Breakout, Part 9

The surface roads are already almost deserted. The crawler has to actually slow down to avoid reaching their turn before the storm. They hit the waypoint just as the wall of sand descends, the flying grit choking off all light and sound, nothing past the windshield but a solid red-brown mass.

CH3: Breakout, Part 8

The Campaign of the Vanguardists

The Vanguardists were a break-away faction of Zealots, who felt the Zealot leadership were insufficiently vigorous in their approach. The Vanguardist faction believed that, while the lower classes must necessarily furnish the mass and troops of the revolution, they could not move by themselves, but must be moved by a “vanguard” of professional revolutionaries. In order for that vanguard to secure the leadership of the lower classes, it must demonstrate its fitness for that leadership, by beginning the revolution before obtaining the leadership. To that end, they planned, prepared, and carried out a campaign of assassination and terrorism targeting the municipal aristocracy.

CH3: Breakout, Part 7

The man with the binoculars is still standing in the hangar entryway, waiting. He won't have to wait much longer. The dust storm is growing bigger every second, a vast, billowing, choking auburn cloud of sand and grit swept up from the northern wastes. But right now he's focused on the Palace, waiting for the signal, tension riding his spine. And then – a flicker, another, and the lights go out, and he grins ferociously.

CH3: Breakout, Part 6

Geopolitics Immediately Prior to the Fool's War

After the first decade of Autarch Miraxus II's rule, tensions between Elysium and the Amazonis Bloc began to flare up again. The initial cause was the defection of the city of Lucky Strike, a former Elysium vassal. Miraxus I had persuaded Autarix Heliora III of Lucky Strike to break with the Amazonis Bloc and sign a mutual defense and trade pact, a deal sealed by the marriage of one of his sons to Heliora III. However, when Heliora IV succeeded her mother, she decided to break the treaty, realigning with Amazonis, and no amount of Elysian persuasion was able to change her mind.

CH3: Breakout, Part 5

Four kilometers south of the Urban Palace, a man is standing in the open door of a garage, looking to the north through a pair of binoculars. He's watching a blob of brown-red that is just barely visible on the horizon – but is growing fast. Right on time.

CH3: Breakout, Part 4

Politics in Elysium Before the Fool's War

Political activity within Autarchic Elysium can be separated into three broad, overlapping categories: the politics of the unemployed and unbonded laboring classes; the politics of the Guilds, merchants, minor aristocracy, and other educated elites; and the politics of the Autarchic court.