Kraken

Product Information

Morrison took this to an extreme in his own London-based Contemporary Fantasy, 'The Invisibles', flooding his plot and characters with so many meanings, traditions, and details that he often loses the thread of his story completely.

The first book of Miéville’s that I truly respected and whatever else, because love isn’t the sort of word you use with that book, was Embassytown, which was a bit of a mind-bender of a science-fiction book. Unfortunately, Miéville muddies the plot significantly enough that it takes far too long for them to solve the mystery.His is a strong, intelligent, and literate vision of the growing and popular subgenre of modern-day magic. Many characters in Kraken speak in British slang dialects that, as an American, were a little difficult to parse.

The language was the biggest thorn, though in my other frames of mind, I also really enjoyed it at the same time. JV: *taps forehead with pen* You know, Mieville, I kind of like the idea of basing our next books off of Mad Libs, but I can't help but feeling like this particular storyline is just unavoidably plain.

I haven’t read Un Lun Dun yet, but I gather it was a departure, but it was a YA novel so some changes were understandable.

In a review for The Guardian, Damien G Walter says: " Kraken seems as though Miéville is taking a step back from the artistic agenda that has previously informed his writing, perhaps to flex creative muscles grown stiff in the constraining seriousness of the New Weird.In typical Mievilleian fashion, he describes it thusly: There were pickets of insects, pickets of birds, pickets of slightly animate dirt. Miéville takes this boilerplate idea and makes it something new with the unique cast of characters, types of magic, etc. The protagonists are hitting one dead end after another, following this thread to that thread and back again. Neverwhere‘s London Below was safely out of sight and its interactions with the mundane world were mediated by homeless people, whereas there’s no metaphysical division between Miéville’s two Londons. Except that having the world end in one way means it won't end in another; for instance, the Krakenists may find themselves exultant, but other cultists are decidedly less pleased and want to usher in their particular Armageddon instead.

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’ve read a lot of reviews, both good and bad, but haven’t read the book yet, so I did skip your spoiler paragraph.

The last issue, and perhaps the most odd, is way the book takes it for granted that eradicating knowledge of evolution somehow equates to the end of the world. Every few chapters, just when I thought we would make a big break, there would be a new twist or new piece of information.