The Annihilation Score
Charles Stross, Elle Newlands (Narrator)
One of Charles Stross's goals when he wrote The Annihilation Score, novel 6 in the Laundry Files, was to pass the Bechdel Test.
The Bechdel test (/ˈbɛkdəl/ BEK-dəl),[1] also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test, is a test to measure the representation of women in film and other fiction. The test asks whether a work features at least two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man. In some iterations, the requirement that the two female characters be named characters is added.
On his blog Stross scores The Annihilation Score as follows
Pass (solid)
Dominique O'Brien, Mhari Murphy, and Ramona Random form a superhero team and fight crime: their supervillain enemy is another woman; explicitly references the Bechdel Test in the very first chapter. (I wrote it while feeling self-conscious about the hard fail in Palimpsest.)
Those of us who have taught classes for a living have a phrase, "teaching to the test". It is when you specifically teach students what they need to know to pass the tests, especially standardized tests. Teaching to the test is generally recognized as a bad thing, because learning how to pass a standardized test almost always occurs to the detriment of learning actual useful stuff like solving real-world mathematical problems or reading comprehension, or whatever it is you're really trying to accomplish.
Stross wrote The Annihilation Score to the Bechdel Test, and the unfortunate result, in my opinion, is a novel that solidly passes the letter of the test, but also badly fails to portray women who are independent of men. The first giveaway is that the three named heroes, Dominique (Mo) O'Brien, Mhari Murphy, and Ramona Random, are all women who are or have been in intimate relationships with Mo's husband Bob Howard. In fact, it could not be more clear that, even when unnamed, Bob is a factor in many of the conversations among them, particularly between Mhari and Mo. Furthermore, much of the plot revolves around the relationship between Mo, our first-person narrator, and a new and attractive male character.
At the end of the previous book, The Rhesus Chart, Mo came home unexpectedly to find Mhari at the home she shared with Bob. Mhari had been invited there by Bob to keep her safe from a dangerous attack that was in progress on all the Laundry Vampires (one of whom is Mhari). He thoughtlessly failed to warn Mo of this, so that when Mo got home she nearly murdered Mhari with her bone violin. Bob, as a consequence of the events in The Rhesus Chart, had just become host to a powerful entity called the Eater of Souls, and Mo's bone violin, sensing him as a danger, had, after almost murdering Mhari, almost broken Mo's control and murdered Bob. Bob and Mo are therefore separated because they can't be safe with each other, and there is bad blood between Mo and Mhari.
This is the first Laundry Files novel not told from Bob's point of view. From Bob's point of view, he and Mo had a happy marriage until the vampire apocalypse just related. It is clear from Mo's narration, however, that on her side the marriage was much less satisfactory. Bob's super-power (as recognized by Persephone Hazard in The Apocalypse Codex) is being underestimated, and even Mo is not immune.
The real problem with the The Annihilation Score, however, is that Mo is just much less *FUN* than Bob. She's an overworked burocrat under extreme stress, she's not funny, and even when she's having fun the novel fails to communicate much sense of fun to the reader.
Sadly, narrator Elle Newlands is not as good as the extraordinary Gideon Emery. In Elle's voice everyone sounds the same -- it's almost all Received Pronunciation with some slight variation in poshness, and very rare regional variations. Even Ramona, who should have an American accent (see The Jennifer Morgue, where she first appears as an American intelligence agent with an accent described as "vaguely East Coast") is pronounced in RP by Newlands.
It is also true that little that happens in The Annihilation Score has much impact on the plot line of the rest of the series. Thus, if for some reason you wanted to skip a Laundry Files novel, this would probably be the best one. For a truly solid Laundry Files novel with a woman hero, look forward to The Labyrinth Index, where it is Mhari's time to shine.
The most important consequences for the rest of Laundry Files that occur here are: (1) Mo manages to dispose of the white violin forever. (2) She is promoted to auditor -- Mo is henceforth a member of the Laundry's elevated Mahogany Row. Also in The Annihilation Score we get to know the senior auditor, Dr Michael Armstrong fairly well. He will be an important character going forward.
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