The Kraken Sea

Jackson is a boy who has grown up feeling adrift and unloved. Found as an infant in a wooden daffodil crate and brought up in an orphanage run by nuns, Jackson is the oldest and strangest of the wards at the orphanage. A boy who sometimes has scaly skin and whose limbs want to change into snakelike coils. This changes when he is put on an orphan train headed to San Francisco, CA. He is to be adopted by someone who sister Jerome Grace has told him has asked for a boy who is just like him

However something happens during a brief stopover in Chicago when the nuns take the children to visit the World's fair. Jackson witnesses the mistreatment of a girl with snake limbs like himself and meets a mysterious black eyed girl. Shaken by the show more events Jackson is calmed by Sister Jerome Grace who shows him he is not alone and tells him he needs to continue to San Francisco so he can learn to become all that he is.

Upon reaching California, he meets the woman who has requested him from the orphanage and is thrust into a world unlike that of his previous life. This world is full of magical people, a city divided into territories, and the black eyed girl glimpsed in Chicago reappears and is a key player in the events which unfurl in the months after Jackson arrives in the city. Not everything is as it seems, and Jackson seems to be the catalyst to a climactic battle between two enemies.

I was drawn into this novella. It was written with a fantastic mix of realism, fantasy and blending in mythology. This author is new to me and I really enjoyed her writing quite a bit. I ended the story wanting to know more and wishing it had been a full length novel. There were so many fantastic supporting characters and surroundings that I would have loved to explore more of. However as this was Jackson's story I understand why less focus was made on them. I also loved the mythology aspects to the story it really made this alternate nineteenth century United States an intriguing world where magic still exists alongside new technology and nothing is quite what it seems. Jackson's struggle to learn who he is and what he believes in as he is thrown into events which challenge his beliefs.

I received this as part of librarything's June early reviewer program for my honest opinion about the book. show less

I am torn about this novella, but mostly because it was not the full-length novel it needed to be. The atmosphere was thick and wonderful with sense of strangeness and veiled dangers that, like the main character, seemed to be barely contained and pushed on the margins of the pages. However, about two-thirds of the way through, the plot took a turn -- well, not really a turn, it's just that the plot kinda finally showed up and I was so confused by its sudden appearance that I thought maybe I had skipped some pages of explanation somewhere (I didn't). The last part jumps around from scene to scene really quickly, ruining the immersive effect it had going for it, and leaving me a little confused about its mythology. In shorter terms -- show more the ending was rushed and so it suffered.

Other than that though, I loved the imagery, the wordsmithing, and the foundation of the story. I'm a sucker for tentacles and tentacle monsters -- just putting my biases out there. I have other anthologies with this author in it, and now I'm much more interested to find out what they are like because there was definitely good here. If it had had more room to grow it would have been perfect for me. show less

Maybe fans of Jackson's Unreal Circus will get more out of it?

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through Library Thing's Early Reviewers program.)

The woman laughed and it was the sound of falling down a rabbit hole and ending up someplace you never expected and didn't entirely understand.

-- 2.5 stars --

DNF at 66%.

Abandoned at a foundling hospital in New York as a newborn, fifteen-year-old Jackson knows little of the world beyond his small slice of it. He's reasonably well cared for by the nuns - especially Sister Jerome Grace, to whom he's taken a special liking - yet he's very much alone, set apart and ostracized because of his differences. Though he tries to hide his true nature, in times of stress Jackson show more has trouble concealing his scaled skin; the tentacles that wriggle under the surface of human limbs; and the gaping maw that can literally swallow boys his size whole.

No doubt Jackson's long since given up on ever being adopted - so imagine his surprise when a mysterious woman sends for "a boy like him" all the way from San Francisco. Jackson boards a train for the Pacific and, after a weird and destructive stop at the Chicago World's Fair (the year being 1893), he joins Macquarie’s, Cressida's home-slash-mansion-slash-estate-slash-saloon. It's filled with fantastical creatures like Jackson - human, but also not - as well as intrigue and shifting alliances, which threaten to upend Jackson's newfound normalcy.

With its carnivalesque vibe, The Kraken Sea seems like a book I should love. And indeed, a few early scenes really piqued my excitement. Chief among them: Jackson's unplanned stop at a sideshow tent in the White City, where he's enraged to find a tentacled woman imprisoned in a filthy cage. Cue images of Menagerie's Delilah Marlow, one of my all-time favorite heroes. There's a kraken that eats shadows; a fox fur stole that's actually alive; and stone gargoyles that leap into the air and devour would-be patrons who try to sneak into rival Bell's without paying.

And while there are plenty of great elements here, it feels like they were all thrown together, creating a jumbled and confusing mess. The plot lacks tension; characters pop up at weird times and places, with little explanation; and there really isn't much character development to speak of. I read a little more than half the book in one day, but couldn't bring myself to return to it the next - not when I have so many (potentially) great books waiting in the wings. I feel a little silly DNF'in such a short book, but I just didn't care enough about Jackson, Mae, and Cressida to give it the old college try.

The story could benefit from a more thorough polishing, I think, and might read better as a full-length novel. Some of the ideas could use more time and attention. As it stands, though, The Kraken Sea feels like a hodgepodge of half-explored concepts; way too busy, with only the thinnest thread of a plot holding them together.

I guess it also doesn't help that this story is set in an already established universe (told through multiple short stories) with which I am wholly unfamiliar. So...I don't know? Maybe existing fans of Jackson's Unreal Circus will get more out of it than I did?

http://www.easyvegan.info/2016/08/03/the-kraken-sea-by-e-catherine-tobler/ show less

Note: I received a copy of this book through the Early Reviewer program of LibraryThing.

I've been following Apex Publications and Apex Magazine for a while now, they publish the type of work I really like (slightly weird SF/Fantasy/Horror). I had heard about "The Kraken Sea" by E. Catherine Tobler through several websites I follow and just the word 'Kraken' made me very interested. Who can resist a Kraken?
Jackson, an orphan boy is adopted by Cressida, a woman in a great big mansion in San Fransisco who does not care that he is different. And he is very different, because when he loses control he is not... quite human anymore. In Cressida's house this isn't that big of a deal, because she introduces him to a world where he is not the show more weirdest ones.
"The Kraken Sea" is a good mix between urban fantasy and ancient mythology in the modern world. Because this is a novella the whole set up of the story is pretty short (and the eventual appearance of the Kraken). While reading it I couldn't shake the feeling that this story could have been so much more as a novel. I wanted to know more about the whole mythology behind the story and the world building, and felt it was all a little rushed to stay within a certain word/page limit. If this story was ever expanded to a novel I would sure read it.
Side remark, this story could benefit from more editing/a better layout. It has some weird layouts (underlined words/sentences?) and some bad grammar. In the end the story beat the editing.
For me this was 4 out of 5 stars, and I will keep an eye on E. Catherine Tobler. show less

Thanking Apex Book Company for providing a copy and giving me the opportunity to read and review The Kraken Sea.

"It began with a dragon in the pouring rain, the beast barely held at bay, balanced upon two thin steel rails. Steam poured from its back mouth and guts, billowing through the damp gloom."

With an opening like this, I had a feeling I was going to love this book. I really wanted to. And I did!
The more I read, the more I felt like Jackson. Trying my hardest to keep my shape. I couldn't let the beast out, turning pages like a maniac instead.

Never had I imagined that Tobler could utilize the coils in such a way, it seemed as if she was using them to steer the story with its twists and turns.

I was however a tad disappointed in the show more scene of the Kraken being (too) short. Even though I believe there was far more potential, I did LOVE this book and want more! show less

The Kraken Sea by E. Catherine Tobler is a dark and weird book I won from LibraryThing and I am so glad I did. I fell into it's strange arms and relished in it! There are so many strange creatures, interactions, and twisting and turning roads the author takes you on... love it. It is a wonderful, lovely tale you have to read. It is a short novel and worth the time. You can't help but feel for the strange boy that doesn't fit in, the boy with tentacles he keeps hidden beneath, below, to fit in...but he wants to be himself. Great job.

Summation: A boy whose extremities turn into tentacles and who occasionally eats people has coming of age. (This story is a prequel to a series of loosely collected short stories: The Unreal Circus).

As I am increasingly uninterested in reading about yet another adolescent male's sexual awakening, this was a big miss for me. I had to grit my teeth through reading the 15-year-old protagonist's incessant desire to be told the personal name of an adult nun, age 25 or so, like it was a disclosure due to him, the ass. The writing is florid for my tastes; the prose can't quite hold its grip on the plot. The story has been cultivated to be dreamlike but, for me, has over-tipped its hand.

My gut reaction aside, I think this novella could have show more benefited from another editorial review. The pacing was very awkward; the shift in scenes at times unclear; and it was an unusual stylistic choice to use underlines to denote emphasized text, one apparently made for no particular reason. On the pro side, however, the cover artwork for this novella is gorgeous.

Two to three stars, and I'm ambivalent about picking up more of Tobler's work to read. Persons already fans of her Unreal Circus would probably have enjoyed this novella more than I did. show less