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Loading... Kraken (2010)by China Miéville
  
Books Read in 2016 (898) » 14 more Books Read in 2017 (1,105) KayStJ's to-read list (180) Books Read in 2015 (2,045) Five star books (1,151) 2010s (19) At the Library (10) Biggest Disappointments (506) No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) lschiff | Sep 24, 2023 |  adze117 | Sep 24, 2023 | Kraken is, as stated, an urban fantasy novel featuring a fairly bumbling everyman (Billy)evolving into his powers and role as a savior of sorts over the course of a story involving stolen giant squid, museums, multiple religions and apocalypses, and a cast of characters who like our main character are not necessarily detailed and deep enough to really identify with deeply. Structurally, its a bit of a mess, and while the language is interesting and something I adjusted to eventually, its bit off the wall and in places incomplete feeling (especially where dialogue is concerned). A large number of characters speak a bit like hard drug addicts I've known over the years, with a patois and pattern of speech that seems to assume everyone hearing them is in the know about what their parlance or at least should be. And maybe that's the point? Since being aware of the hidden magical side of London makes all of the characters that same sort of niche, ignored population. But at least among the professionals you'd expect a few to depart from that. Honestly, the most interesting character is one of the secondary ones, Wati, and likely because its where Mievelle really gets to lean into his personal politics. Specifically, labor/union politics. Wati has the most interesting and complete background, and feels the most relatable despite not being a 'person'. I think with a lot of other characters (Goss and Subby spring to mind, as well as several of the other antagonists as well as secondary protagonists like Collingsworth). The structural issues have to do with too many deux-s ex machina (though maybe that's the point given the number of religions in the book) and an absurdist number of plot twists, especially in the final quarter of the book. There's also a weird 'love interest' of sorts shoe-horned into the last few pages (almost an epilogue, definitely a denouement) that previously had no indications throughout the book that it was a possibility that feels really clumsy and forced. Did I enjoy the book? Yes. Did I adjust to and even come to enjoy a few of the faults like the language? Sure. Was it even, to an extent, 'fun'. Yeah. But was it 'weird fiction'? Definitely fucking not. Was it the masterpiece of writing I expected from all the hype surrounding Mieville? Also most certainly not. It feels like the same sort of escapist, fun, kind-of-power-fantasy urban fantasy I've casually enjoyed since I was a teenager, with one interesting politically laden (and ultimately unimportant) subplot. Am I done with Mieville? Probably not. I'll give one or two more books a shot to see if I get a more deft integration of his leftist politics with fantasy/horror, or more of the supposed 'weird' that's supposed to be here (though I take any designation from the Vandermeer's with a grain of salt). Barring that, at least its kind of sophomoric power fantasy fun. (  ) jdavidhacker | Aug 4, 2023 |  ) milosdumbraci | May 5, 2023 | It has very, fucking very many marvelous and interesting details, that by most writerly people would make this feel quite a crowded and jostly book, but Miéville is somehow like, urban magic? in. transmogrified tattoo? done. various culty cults, including squid worship? check. competing Armageddons? naturally. gunfarmers? monsterherds? ink magic? angels of memory? time fire? warbly iPod magical guardian? Yep, yes, here, there, uh huh, yeah, duh. Plot-wise, pretty weird, which is basically Miéville's modus operandi, see above. Squidmageddon, come on. I'm not sure I understood exactly what was happening at any given moment, but that is pretty much true of my life in general, so not a big surprise. I've seen a few comparisons to Gaiman, which is inescapable, I guess because [b: Neverwhere|14497|Neverwhere|Neil Gaiman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348747943s/14497.jpg|16534], but I recommend if you liked [b: City of Saints and Madmen|230852|City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris, #1)|Jeff VanderMeer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390260432s/230852.jpg|522014], it's very like in style and squid, and there are some similarish ideas in [b: A Madness of Angels|6186355|A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift, #1)|Kate Griffin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1305861910s/6186355.jpg|6366640] but the tone there is quite different. (  ) wonderlande | Jan 1, 2023 |
 Kraken utilises Miéville’s common setting of London, albeit a strange London. This otherness beside the familiar is a strand in his work evident from King Rat and Un Lun Dun through to THE CITY AND YTIC EHT. This one started out as if it may have been written with a film or TV adaptation in mind - one with a potentially light-hearted take - but soon veers off down strange Miévillean byways which may be unfilmable. For these are the end times and cultists worshipping all manner of weird gods abound. It begins with a kind of locked room mystery as a giant squid, Architeuthis, has been stolen - formalin, tank and all - from its stance in the Darwin Centre, a natural history museum where Billy Harrow is a curator. He helped to prepare the squid for show and is thought to hold the knowledge that might allow all those interested in its recovery to find it. The police fundamentalist and cult squad, the FSRC, is called in to help investigate the disappearance which becomes more involved when Billy discovers a body pickled (in too small a jar) in the museum’s basement. And these are merely the first strangenesses to be encountered in this book. We also have the consciousness of a man embedded within a tattoo, a tattoo which moves and speaks. Then there is the double act of Goss and Subby - two shapeshifting baddies from out of time (they shift other people’s shapes) - and weird sects, cults and mancers of all sorts. Never short of incident and brimming with plot the novel is probably a bit too convoluted, with too many characters for its own good, and its one-damn-strange-thing-after-another-ness can verge on overkill. But this is an unashamed fantasy, a form to which I am antipathetic when it is taken to extremes; and Miéville is not one for restraint. While Kraken sometimes skirts along the edge of comedy it never fully embraces it. There are too many killings and acts of violence for comedy to sit comfortably. I might have liked the novel better if it had. Its main fault is that it never manages to settle on which sort of book it is meant to be, straddling various narrative stools such as police procedural, one man against the odds, woman in search of the truth about her vanished lover, etc. Miéville has done what all great science-fiction has done—and great so-called literary fiction, when it gets around to it—provide a nuanced, highly imagined critique of the zeitgeist, dressed up in a crackerjack story.  ""... "Kraken" is, no mistake, a literary work. The hint is in the subtitle, "An Anatomy," because Miéville is exploring the gap between the prosaic squid and the mythic Kraken, between the mundane ground of everyday life and the sacred. What precisely turns a fish into a god? What is the anatomy of a legend? And how do gods manifest themselves in our world? ...Miéville's best work since "Perdido Street Station." Belongs to Publisher SeriesBastei Lübbe Fantasy (20560)
Fantasy.
Fiction.
Literature.
Science Fiction.
HTML:With this outrageous new novel, China Miville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read thisor any otheryear. The London that comes to life in Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring aboutor preventthe End of All Things. In the Darwin Centre at Londons Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centres prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis duxbetter known as the Giant Squid. But Billys tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air. As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizenshuman and otherwiseare adept in magic and murder. There is the Congregation of God Kraken, a sect of squid worshippers whose roots go back to the dawn of humanityand beyond. There is the criminal mastermind known as the Tattoo, a merciless maniac inked onto the flesh of a hapless victim. There is the FSRCthe Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unita branch of Londons finest that fights sorcery with sorcery. There is Wati, a spirit from ancient Egypt who leads a ragtag union of magical familiars. There are the Londonmancers, who read the future in the citys entrails. There is Grisamentum, Londons greatest wizard, whose shadow lingers long after his death. And then there is Goss and Subby, an ageless old man and a cretinous boy who, together, constitute a terrifyingyet darkly charismaticdemonic duo. All of themand othersare in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from China Mivilles Embassytown.. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.59)
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