In The Annihilation Score Charles Stross continues his Laundry Files series but switches viewpoints. Here we get a story from Mo, wife of our previous series narrator. Mo is a combat epistemologist who plays the violin --- a very special, possessed violin made of bone & capable of killing demons. She works for a secret British agency known as the laundry and has lately been put in charge of creating a department to deal with an outbreak of superheroes that comes with a complimentary outbreak of super villains. In the meantime her violin is beginning to require more and more from her. This is an exciting book that does not lack for interesting plot elements. My quibble with it was that it was a bit too predictable. It was kind of easy to figure out, in advance of the narrator, who the villain behind the piece was though I was less on target with guessing motivation. All in all definitely a book for fans of the series and I think accessible for those who haven’t been following the series. Better, in fact, then some of the previous series books. Give it a try.
