Kraken [Hardcover]

China Mieville (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: MacMillan; First Edition edition (2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0333989503
• ISBN-13: 978-0333989500
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (130 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,906,383 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

China Miéville is the author of King Rat; Perdido Street Station, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award; The Scar, winner of the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award; Iron Council, winner of the Locus Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Looking for Jake, a collection of short stories; and Un Lun Dun, his New York Times bestselling book for younger readers. He lives and works in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark and different, scary and humorous., May 25, 2010

By 

Wulfstan "wulfstan" (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kraken (Hardcover)

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A fascinating new novel by China Miéville, author of Perdido Street Station, which won the 2001 Arthur C. Clarke Award the 2001 British Fantasy Award, and was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus and British Science Fiction awards. (He also wrote "King Rat", but not the "King Rat" that is set in a WWII POW Camp. )

The publishers would like you to think that it's similar to Neil Gaiman, and sure, two of the villains in this story are reminiscent of "the Old Firm"(but nastier, if that's possible). But I see more Tim Powers and James Blaylock, with more than a touch of H.P. Lovecraft (or maybe it's just all those tentacles....).

It's technically Urban Fantasy, set in more or less modern day London. But it also has more than a little horror. And, oddly enough- it has some rather humorous bits too. Both scary and funny at times. The authors obvious love for and deep knowledge of London gives the book added depth.

Our protagonist is swept along by events and people (and things) he hadn't any concept of in his prior life as a museum curator. He is forced out of his humdrum existence by the impossible theft of a giant squid pickled in a huge tank of formalin, a kraken that he himself had a hand in preserving.

Enlivened by some interesting and original characters, including a few new deities and religions, it's entirely a different kettle of cuttlefish than your usual urban fantasy. It's also not a book you want to read yourself to sleep with. (The tentacles!!!!! Eeeeeeeeeeee!)

It's different. It's dark. It's scary. It's different. It's humorous. It's well written. It's worth reading. It's... did I say different?

54 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing!, May 30, 2010

By 

P. B. Sharp (NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kraken (Hardcover)

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China Mieville writes like nobody else. Exceedingly erudite (he has a PhD) he throws many words you've never heard of into this fantastic brew taking place in his London- and London to him is a huge living thing, a great breathing, crouching beast. Windows rattle and bricks speak and of course there's plenty of swirling fog to top everything off. His writing is quirky, he uses highly inventive similes such as "Bits of rubbish shifted in gusts, crawled on the pavement like bottom feeders." London is alive if not well.

Mieville carries you with him with great skill. You're there. You shudder. You shiver. You laugh. He takes you into the bowels of London. He wraps you the reader in a supernatural cocoon where all the ends are tied up and you can't escape. Where bizarre events and supernatural goings- on appear quite normal. You are plunged into a surrealistic world of strange cults, pagan apocalypses and god-like reptiles."Kraken" is concentrated New Weird which takes a bit of time to get used to.

The action starts when Billy Harrow, the unassuming curator of mollusks in the Darwin Center is leading a group of visitors on a tour when he discovers the Center's star attraction, an eight meter long giant squid preserved in a huge tank of formalin, has disappeared tank and all. It is unthinkable, it is impossible but there is a great gaping space where the squid used to be.

Billy embarks on a mission to solve the mystery and he is plunged into a surrealistic world of twisted and peculiar events, and crosses the path of strange cults, all fighting each other to conquer with their own particular apocalypse.

Somehow the disappearance of the giant squid has set in motion a series of horrible events, an Armageddon which will destroy the world. This is a roller coaster ride and the reader finds he is sucked into a world that is impossible yet believable. That's part of Mieville's genius: he makes the outré, the fantastic, the surreal quite believable. There is a holy war going on with a giant squid as a god and some are not taking the theft of their god well.

Billy has a large supporting cast, but he remains the pivotal character of the book, unassuming, modest and rather endearing. The local London police have a special division called the Fundamentalist and Sect related Crime Unit, its most illustrious member being the brash, witchy no- holds- barred Kath Collingswood "trendily unkempt." Dane, who is a worker at the Darwin Museum, belongs to a Krakenist cult and isn't a bit happy about the theft of the squid-god. Dane and Billy join ranks with Wati, a member of the spirit world who insinuates himself into strange objects, statues, stares through "wooden eyes on a Jesus" He sometimes inhabits nerdy objects, too, such as Star Trek's Captain Kirk.(Mieville is gently pulling our leg here). Crime lord Tattoo with his terrifying undead henchmen, Goss and Subby is Billy's chief antagonist.

Will the snarled, convoluted groups of squid worshipers get their giant mollusk back safely in the Darwin Center? Can Armageddon be held at bay? Ah, you have to read the book and you're in for a different, very different reading experience. The novel is 500 pages long but you'll be swept into that cocoon where Mieville imprisons you and he's not going to let you go! You may never have given a thought before to a giant squid, but you will now!

81 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Congregation of the God Kraken, more AND less..., May 31, 2010

By 

R Schmidt (Honolulu, HI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kraken (Hardcover)

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In Kraken, London is a strange place, a city with characters and entities having strange powers, a place of bizarre creatures, and a mystery or two.

Museum curator Billy Harrow goes from having a normal, simple life, giving tours and preparing specimens, to a creepy, haunted one in the midst of a frenzied search for a stolen specimen of a giant squid from his museum. There is a Congregation of the God Kraken, you see. God was just stolen. Who stole it is a mystery, but there is no mystery that, whoever took it, others now see its value, and want to recover it. Billy is thought to know more than he lets on, so he also becomes a target of this search.

There's a deep complexity to this story, and to author China Mieville's writing:

"He had been a point of awareness, a soul-spot, a sentient submerged node, and had drifted over an ocean floor that he had seen in monochrome, lightless as it would have been, and that had pitched suddenly into a crevasse, a Mariana Trench of water like clothed shadow." This was a bit of Billy's dreaming... inspired by the kraken?

There are mysterious and unique characters here. Tattoo, Wati, Jason, Subby and Goss... And the real folk, Dane and Collingswood and Marge (as well as Billy), each have their own learning curve and adventures.

But this was a story that seemed... excessive. The detail dampened my enthusiasm for the tale. It became a chore to continue to read. And when the twists and turns came to their conclusion, I was left with a sense of relief, not of knowing how things turned out, but that it was over. Ouch. Mieville seems to have been caught up in developing the minutiae of actions, conversations, and interactions. The detail drove the story, instead of the story driving the detail.

The Star Trek connection, including a working phaser, was a stretch. And the inability of "normal" folk to have any clue that all this magic is happening around them all the time was also strange. After all, London's newspapers are so competitive that you think any weirdness would hit the front page. Everybody would be looking out for eccentric characters, wouldn't they?

I noted the sage comments of the Teuthex, or high priest of the kraken worshippers, concerning religion:

"'I'm asking you all to have faith. Don't be afraid. 'How could it have gone wrong?' people have asked me. 'Why aren't the gods doing anything?' Remember two things. The gods don't owe us anything. That's not why we worship. We worship because they're gods. This is their universe, not ours. What they choose they choose and it's not ours to know why."

I didn't like the book. That's different than saying it was bad, or incomplete, or poorly written. It just wasn't my cup of squid ink.