Escape from Yokai Land: A Laundry Files Novella

By Charles Stross

Regular readers of Charles Stross's Laundry Files might have noticed Bob Howard's absence from the events of The Nightmare Stacks, and his subsequent return from Tokyo at the start of The Delirium Brief.

Escape from Yokai Land explains what he was doing there.

Bob's been assigned to work with the Miyamoto Group, checking the wards that lock down Japan's warded sites—a task previously handled by his predecessor Dr. Angleton, the Eater of Souls. This mostly involves policing yokai: traditional magical beings, increasingly grown more annoying and energetic.

But then Bob's simple trip turns into a deadly confrontation with the ultimate yokai. It's massively powerful. It's pink. And it says "Hello."

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250805713

Charles Stross

CHARLES STROSS (he/him) is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has won three Hugo Awards for Best Novella, including for the Laundry Files tale “Equoid.” His work has been translated into over twelve languages. His novels include the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry series (including Locus Award finalist The Dilirium Brief), and several stand-alones including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn's Children. Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped catastrophes, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stakeout) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing, he tried to change employers just as the bubble burst) to technical writer and prolific journalist covering the IT industry. Along the way he collected degrees in pharmacy and computer science, making him the world’s first officially qualified cyberpunk writer.

Book preview

I’m sorry, Bob, says Dr. Armstrong, "but they asked for you specifically because Hello Kitty is a Londoner."

It’s a Friday afternoon in May, and I’m making a futile attempt to get out of the most pointless waste of time and energy to land on my desk this year. I tried Mrs. MacDougal in HR first, but she just sneered at me and told me to man up. (Few people ever win a face-off with Emma; decades of disciplining idiots who send dick-pics from work—or ovipositor pics, in some cases—have turned her heart to granite.) So, after getting knocked back by HR, I went to lobby the Senior Auditor. He has a better grasp of what this kind of liaison job entails than HR—he’s been there himself, after all. But I’m getting an unexpectedly unsympathetic hearing.

"What part of ‘our eighth wedding anniversary’ isn’t getting through to you? Mo will assume I forgot, and blame me. You know that thing she does, when she turns so chilly that her sense of irony achieves superconductivity? I’m talking freezer burns. And that’s before we get into my four-month-deep to-do list of Severity One containment issues that need my official attention, stat, because— I stop. My old boss, Angleton, isn’t here anymore, and I’m working my way through his backlog of jobs and it kind of sucks, but I’m not placing any blame on his shoulders. I don’t need this right now," I continue, and even to my own ears it comes out a little petulant.

Bob. Dr Armstrong gives me a long-suffering look. "You’re separated."

Not through choice! And in any case there are loads of high-priority jobs on our doorstep, stuff we’re officially tasked with locking down right here without buggering off on a foreign assistance junket. I still haven’t finished decontaminating Gruinard—(the press think it’s anthrax spores: if they had any inkling what Churchill ordered tested there during the war it’d trigger a mass panic)—and then there’s the thing in Shaft Ten at Dounreay, not to mention the anomalous readings near Malham Cove—

Enough! Dr. Armstrong eyes me like a university professor sizing up a student who’s spending more time in the bar than the library. "They wouldn’t be asking for you without a very good reason. James was there in ’46, and again in ’77. They’re due another visit round about now anyway, you’re his direct successor, and it is our responsibility. Postwar UN occupation, residual cleanup per international treaty. You can’t let this slide, it’ll make us look shifty and unreliable. More shifty and unreliable," he corrects himself, clearly thinking of our beloved coalition government and their attitude toward foreign aid (encouraged when it’s a fig leaf for defense industry exports; otherwise, not).

He straightens up and proceeds to hand down judgment. "You need to go to Japan to check the hit list of warded sites James left behind in case any of them are leaking. You need to look into this business in—where is it, Tama New Town?—that our colleagues from the Miyamoto Group are banging on about. Explain what happened to Dr. Angleton and introduce yourself as his successor, then bring them up to date on recent developments. While you’re at it you should read, digest, and apply the guidelines in chapters eight through eleven of the Civil Service Overseas Liaison Handbook while bearing in mind best practices for Foreign Office adjuncts on temporary posting overseas."

Crap. I surrender to the inevitable as he opens a drawer in his desk and rummages furiously for a few seconds. Can I just say—

Here you are! A local travel guide: James swore by it. He pushes a dog-eared paperback at me—The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore. I think you might find it amusing. I’ll talk to Mrs. MacDougal about clearing your travel and expenses authorization in case it exceeds your discretionary budget cap—Land of the Rising Yen, ha ha—and see if she can sort out a diplomatic visa. You’ll need to be assigned a handler at the embassy, just in case of protocol breaches. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of work ahead, reviewing James’s records from the last two visits. He flashes me a lightning grin. "You might as well take a week’s leave for sightseeing while you’re out there, once the job’s done. You can tell me how accurate the book is when you get

Reviews for Escape from Yokai Land

[glennis.leblanc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novella fits between previous books and I had missed reading about Bob. This covers events where Bob was missing in the main line series since he was off in Japan. And now we find out just what he was doing there. Angleton didn’t make any friends when he helped with an incursion and now Bob is being sent to fill Angleton’s place on a job there. Bob is tested when he arrives to see if he can handle what he needs to work on. The story is classic Laundry Files, and I was glad to read it since I prefer this to the last few books that have come out in the offshoot of the main storyline

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

[sarcher-3 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

A very funny novella. Answers the question - what if you wrote an airport thriller but only managed to write 86 pages before losing interest in the project? What happens when an editor begs for 'anything, we just need something to publish'?

[schant-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A novella, not a novel, and unfortunately not one of his best. Bob's been sent to Tokyo to help contain an outbreak of yokai - Japanese fokloric creatures - and the manifestation of a large, pink Hello Kitty. There are a few of the usuall Stross-like geeky jokes and allusions, but generally it's rather flat and overpriced for its size (86 pages).

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There is nothing wrong with this novella that another couple dozen pages wouldn't cure, but I'm just mostly happy to get a bit more of the adventures of Bob Howard. As always, your mileage may differ.

[cmc_22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bob Howard disappeared for a bit in the novel series, but here we find he’s been sent to Japan to deal with a hideous threat to the world (or at least Japan, or maybe just Tokyo): a kaiju manifestation of Hello Kitty. Alas it’s only a brief story, hence the 3.5 stars instead of 4.(This novella immediately proceeds [The Delirium Brief] in the series timeline.)