Nick reviewed Kraken by China Miéville
Review of 'Kraken' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Wanted to like this more, but the pacing was too slow for me and it was a bit hard for me to suspend my disbelief.
Hardcover, 464 pages
English language
Published June 29, 2010 by Del Rey.
Kraken is a fantasy novel by British author China Miéville. It is published in the UK by Macmillan, and in the US by Del Rey Books. The book bears the subtitle "An Anatomy" on the title page. It was the winner for the 2011 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. Miéville has described the book as "a dark comedy about a squid-worshipping cult and the end of the world. It takes the idea of the squid cult very seriously. Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they’re not absurd."
Wanted to like this more, but the pacing was too slow for me and it was a bit hard for me to suspend my disbelief.
I loved Miéville' s "The City and the City" so when I saw he'd written a book with the protagonist being a mild mannered cephalopod biologist, of course I had to pick it up! Set in London, the book follows Billy, the aforementioned, and the furor that ensues when the preserved remains of a giant squid go missing from the museum where he works. The squid is so huge that nobody could possible have removed it without any trace, and yet, that is what's happened. Adding to the confusion, the dead body of a man is discovered in the museum's basement, stuffed intact into a preserving jar into which there is physically no way he could possibly have fit.
Billy tries to make sense of events, but events simply get stranger and stranger. In a fantastical version of London where magic exists, where gods of all sorts are worshipped on …
I loved Miéville' s "The City and the City" so when I saw he'd written a book with the protagonist being a mild mannered cephalopod biologist, of course I had to pick it up! Set in London, the book follows Billy, the aforementioned, and the furor that ensues when the preserved remains of a giant squid go missing from the museum where he works. The squid is so huge that nobody could possible have removed it without any trace, and yet, that is what's happened. Adding to the confusion, the dead body of a man is discovered in the museum's basement, stuffed intact into a preserving jar into which there is physically no way he could possibly have fit.
Billy tries to make sense of events, but events simply get stranger and stranger. In a fantastical version of London where magic exists, where gods of all sorts are worshipped on a daily basis, and where warring groups of squid worshippers fight to try and recover the remains of their squid-kraken-god, the plot just gets stranger and stranger.
Although I enjoyed the creativity - and the fact the author managed to work the phrase "squid pro quo" into the novel - and of course I enjoyed the biology and the cephalopods - overall I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as The City and the City. The plot was just SO fantastical that the world had no predictability, meaning each plot twist felt like just one deus ex machina after another.
When the fictional world is so unpredictable, so unexplained, and so bizarre that the reader is unable to form a coherent mental image of what's going on, I feel the experience loses me somewhat. Definitely creative, fun, and I enjoyed parts of it, but overall it seemed too unpredictable and incoherent to really grab me. I will definitely try another Miéville novel though!
Ha conseguido que me identifique perfectamente con el protagonista, no me he enterado de nada de lo que ha ido pasando.
weirdly excellent. Takes some getting into but is riveting and fast paced action once you get the lingo.
Mieville is trying too hard to be Neil Gaiman here. A fun read, though.
Not a terrible yarn, but it seems to wander for a good chunk of the book. The more stream of consciousness writing it hard to get through. It only seems to illustrate that something strange is going on here, which would be fine if it wasn't surrounded by tons of weird stuff going on. Will look out for shorter ones by this author, rather than longer.
By far one of the WEIRDEST books I've ever read. A lot of talk about the end of the world, and religions with krakens as gods...it was just very odd. I felt like I was reading a different language half the time. Granted some of that comes from my unfamiliarity with British slang, but really the whole vocabulary surrounding the people who could do "magic" confused me to no end. I obviously liked it well enough to finish it, but I'm not sure if I'll read another of his soon. Goss and Subby were the creepiest, most disturbing villains I've read in a while. The description of how they killed the guy in the jail cell...still gives me the shivers.
Another great work by Miéville, this novel obviously draws heavily on a certain Lovecraftian flavor but adds more dimensions. As with Miéville's other novels, this one is essentially about London.
I had a little difficulty wading through this one. It's quite different than Mieville's previous works, though it's not difficult to see how this evolved from them. Characterization is very strong, with characters that strengthen and evolve logically throughout the narrative. The plot and magical system mesh precisely: both are constructed out of thickly layered and highly detailed metaphor.
Absolutely a book where every little detail is important, will likely come back to effect the plot at some later point.
The missing star in this review is really only to do with the slightly disjointed transition between events, which was rather annoying to me in a few instances. Overall, I would absolutely recommend this book.
The magic system in this book is so incredibly brilliant, that I keep coming back to it. I really hope to see Mieville use it again.
You've all heard the anecdotes about the guy who sits down in a restaurant, plops a chunk of money on the table and says, "this is the tip; I'll be making deductions for every misstep!" What a jerk.
Well, it's a bit how I approach novels. At page one, everyone has five stars (assuming the first line isn't "It was a dark and stormy night.")
The Kraken lost one star a couple of chapters in when I thought "who does this guy think he is: Neil Gaiman?" Think of every derivative work slightly tweaking The Lord of the Rings and I think that's where we're headed with Gaiman's style. Mieville might be the start of it or just the first I've read.
The Kraken lost its second star when I realized that Mieville is no Neil Gaiman. For all its quirk and dark oddity (Mieville might have an edge on …
You've all heard the anecdotes about the guy who sits down in a restaurant, plops a chunk of money on the table and says, "this is the tip; I'll be making deductions for every misstep!" What a jerk.
Well, it's a bit how I approach novels. At page one, everyone has five stars (assuming the first line isn't "It was a dark and stormy night.")
The Kraken lost one star a couple of chapters in when I thought "who does this guy think he is: Neil Gaiman?" Think of every derivative work slightly tweaking The Lord of the Rings and I think that's where we're headed with Gaiman's style. Mieville might be the start of it or just the first I've read.
The Kraken lost its second star when I realized that Mieville is no Neil Gaiman. For all its quirk and dark oddity (Mieville might have an edge on Gaiman in creative profanity, I guess) the story doesn't contain its threads as well as it should. There are little weak links in the chain that aren't soldered in place by a concrete mythology; your disbelief falls through a rotted wood slab on a hastily constructed suspension bridge.
The Kraken lost its third star for slighting characters it had gone through some effort in getting you to care about. I won't say more about it because I don't want to click the 'this review contains spoilers' box.
Two stars and a suggestion that you read Mieville's The City and the City, which reminds me of no one else's work in style or plot and is well-formed and satisfying.
Maybe not Miéville's best story, but the book is so loaded with fascinating and strange ideas that I couldn't help but find it just as compelling as his other novels.
In a book that features squid-worshippers, talking tattoos, thugs with fists instead of heads, and even a tribble, you would think that all this ridiculousness might run wild, but that is not the case with Kraken. Even though the world of the novel is a version of London where multiple gods roam and many of the residents have some affinity for magic, the novel never fully descends into outright absurdity. The villains of the story--a Dickensian pair of personified malevolence, one of whom speaks entirely in a hodgepodge of mixed metaphors, awful analogies, and Cockney nonsense--ground the narrative in a violent reality. Even though the characters have magic at their disposal, the villains have powers far greater and far more sinister, so there is actual drama and conflict, not merely a series of events ending in someone pulling a rabbit out of the hat and then watching as the rabbit …
In a book that features squid-worshippers, talking tattoos, thugs with fists instead of heads, and even a tribble, you would think that all this ridiculousness might run wild, but that is not the case with Kraken. Even though the world of the novel is a version of London where multiple gods roam and many of the residents have some affinity for magic, the novel never fully descends into outright absurdity. The villains of the story--a Dickensian pair of personified malevolence, one of whom speaks entirely in a hodgepodge of mixed metaphors, awful analogies, and Cockney nonsense--ground the narrative in a violent reality. Even though the characters have magic at their disposal, the villains have powers far greater and far more sinister, so there is actual drama and conflict, not merely a series of events ending in someone pulling a rabbit out of the hat and then watching as the rabbit saves the day.
The main flaw with Kraken is that the author sometimes gets lost in creating his alternate London. Like Neal Stephenson's Anathem, much of the narration of Kraken is explaining how the world works, and the histories of its bizarre denizens. These explanations come whether they are needed or not. Explaining the squid cult that is at the center of the novel, or the backstory between London's warring factions is all well and good. But is it really necessary to devote time to explain Chaos Nazis? They're Nazis who love chaos; it's pretty self-explanatory. There are also a couple of sub-plots that, although they join up with the main plot in the end, go into more detail than is actually needed. And there's one potentially interesting sub-plot, involving a kidnapped girl who might be a cross between a human and a djinn, that doesn't get nearly enough attention. But wayward plots are what come with the territory when mixing genres like Kraken does. The novel has elements of horror, Sci-Fi (speculative fiction, if you're nasty), fantasy, and mystery, blending all these genres in a seamless fashion.