I received this book as an ARC through NetGalley.

This novella is noted by Goodreads as number 7.5 in the Laundry Files series – it fills in a gap, basically, about one of the chief characters. For reference, I have read a few Laundry Files stories: I enjoy them a lot, but not quite enough to obsessively chase every single book down. I did enjoy this one a lot, which means that you could probably come to this with maybe even no knowledge of the rest of the books – as long as you’re happy enough not knowing some of the background (like who Mo is). I think there’s enough explanation about things like computers creating magical energy, and therefore background magical radiation increasing as computational power increases, that a reader who’s prepared to roll with it can do just that.

So, the story: Bob Howard is sent to Japan to help them deal with incursions of entities from other dimensions. These can take the shape of various things depending on mythology and so on in the surrounding area… and when Howard is given a hotel room that’s Hello, Kitty themed, alarm bells should have started ringing…

The Laundry Files are what I would consider very pop-literature. This is in no way a statement on quality! What I mean is that they’re fast-paced (very fast-paced, in this instance); there’s a lot of banter; there’s a lot of pop-culture references, some of which I admit I didn’t get but the general gist was obvious. This story just barges along and drags you along in its wake. And it’s a whole lot of fun. In fact, it’s made me start eyeing off the rest of the series…