Kraken

Product Information

Kraken is one I enjoyed muchly, primarily due to its absurdity, the absence of didacticism, and its clever-clever use of language. This is a hard-core concept porn performance by the biggest, girthiest word-smither working in the spec-fic industry today. So not only do these cultists pass as normal in London society without difficulty, they interact with each other the same way rival political activists might: they argue, they share drinks, they make temporary alliances, and occasionally come to blows. The multi-award winning author has reflected the city's surreal side in Un Lun Dun, set it to a drum'n'bass beat in King Rat, and inundated it with vampire imagoes in The Tain. If that's what you're looking for, look elsewhere, although if you know anything about Mieville (I'm told), you should know that you never really get what you expect from his novels.

I found it fascinating and interesting, yet it was still a slog until the last 80 pages or so when the pace picked up. There is the criminal mastermind known as the Tattoo, a merciless maniac inked onto the flesh of a hapless victim. Were there dozens of passages which I had to re-read four or five times, because sometimes the author's preference for affectation proves stronger than his desire to communicate clearly? Original concept and original writing style, I think a very real writing style that sounds like me and my friends talking (only with various British accents and slang). This is word-sensei writing and full-throttle imagination paired with hyper-threaded story-crafting on a scale that only Mieville himself has ever even come close to before.

Kraken gave me a severe case of goodreaditus, an unpleasant condition whereby as you are reading a book you are constantly thinking not about the book itself but how you are going to review it. In Kraken, most of the asides outline a freewheeling Kantian magic system built on belief and symbology, the other asides are fodder for his plot twists, which are somewhat obvious, if only because he has avoided the swirling eddies of uncertainty that would otherwise hide their trail. I’m glad that Miéville is trying different things, though, rather than sticking with the “brand” that made his name. Kraken was an enjoyable read, but I felt that almost every facet of the story, from character to plot to world building, didn’t quite add up.

En lo más remoto del ala de investigación del museo de Historia Natural hay un preciado espécimen, algo único e insólito: un calamar gigante que se conserva en perfecto estado. This is a roller-coaster into otherness just beyond perception and my captivation meter was pinned on lock down every single minute of the story. Genuinely interesting and somewhat good, Kraken doesn’t rate highly against the other Miéville books I’ve read. He's like a squid janitor, he's single, he's 24 or something, quite old, and he earns minor duckets for a thankless job.

But for Gaiman, the power of a symbol is not merely the sum of its reputation--it also retains the accrued power of its history and influence. Some more complications, twists and double-blinds and rather less obvious hints at the "last chapter surprise" villains and their goals would have been advisable too, because, at its very core, the plot of "Kraken" is . Yes, it is very impressive, but the noise drowns out and buries the story, overwhelms the reader's interest and smothers the work under layers of verbose treacle.