Once you lose track of Mr. Howard things do kind of go off into the weeds. The Annihilation Score had me really torn. On the one hand I really really enjoyed all the procedural stuff. The establishment of a bureaucracy devoted to the management of superheroes/magic persons was really fun and chewy to read. Dr. O'Brien's perspective is engaging, especially all the back and forth with the evil violin. On the other, it was pretty ham-handed about how readily demonic activity and stuff could get re-branded as superhero/supervillian stuff.
Yeah, I would agree with those things. The Annihilation Score was pretty good, but I got super bored by The Nightmare Stacks. I started The Delirium Brief, but couldn't really get into it.
Have you or johnnyFive read A Colder War, the novelette that seems to have started Stross down the path to the Laundry Files? I can heartily recommend checking it out; it's much darker in tone, and I frankly like it much more than the Laundry Files series (although I really did like the first couple of books.) A Colder War is definitely one of my favorite short stories. (As a side note, the version of the novelette that's in one of the yearly scifi anthologies edited by Gardner Dozois is slightly better than the one I linked to
I agree. He seems to be trying what with the Laundry becoming public and all, but I'm not sure if it's going to work out.