- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Ballantine (2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0333989503
- ISBN-13: 978-0333989500
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 16 x 4.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 771 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #575,013 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Multiple Apocalypses, Little Cohesion,
By
This review is from: Kraken (Hardcover)
"Kraken"is the latest novel by the great British sf/f author China Mieville and, like all his work, it's chock-full of wild ideas and concepts and conceits. This time, though, it feels more like a "throw in the kitchen sink" kind of wildness; it feels to me lacking in the discipline that he brings to most of his writing. This novel posits a "hidden London" wherein occult churches, arcane cults and mages live, where magic is something real and specific to specific talents, and, oh, yeah, the end of the world is coming. Well, the end of the world is *always* coming in this London because numerous cults have their End Days planned out, but this time it seems like it really is. Young Billy Harrow is a curator at the Natural History Museum (which houses, pickled, Darwin's early specimens, found on his voyage on The Beagle) who specializes in celaphods; in fact, he's worked on the giant (dead) squid the museum houses. When it suddenly, impossibly, disappears, he finds himself discovering hidden London, where some people (the Church of the Kraken especially) think he's a prophet, others think he's the guardian of special knowledge, and yet others seek to use him to bring about their own ends. Some of the individuals he meets are very unpleasant indeed; some of them become his friends and helpers. Under chaotic circumstances, can Billy and his friends prevent the true apocalypse, the one using timefire to burn everything away so that it never has existed at all?.... As always, the writing is tight (and very clever; I noticed times when Mieville deliberately chops up a sentence in uncomfortable ways, to keep the reader off-guard and on edge) and some of the imagery is searing and memorable. But as I said above, this book to me has a lack of focus that I haven't seen in his writing before - he's juggling so many bizarre concepts (knuckleheads, literally thugs whose heads are giant fists; gunfarmers, who organically grow - and use - a variety of firearms; God as a dead Kraken; a long-dead Egyptian simulcrum-cum-union organizer, who speaks through statues and is rallying the badly-treated familiars of the wizards and witches in hidden London) that the main story is sometimes very hard to find. I like Mieville's work generally, but I have to admit this was a bit of a slog. Somewhat disappointing coming after the brilliant "The City & The City," which to my mind remains one of the best novels I've ever read. Recommended, but only just.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Contemporary Fantasy Involving Wizards, Cultists and a Kraken,
By
This review is from: Kraken (Hardcover)
China Mieville gives new meaning to the word "weird" in his outrageously funny and chilling contemporary fantasy novel, "Kraken", set in a London that's both oddly familiar and bizarre, inhabited by wizards and cultists obsessed with magic and myth. Mieville demonstrates anew that he is a uniquely confident master of genre and realistic mainstream fiction, playfully mixing up everything from hard-boiled detective fiction and horror to fantasy that owes more than a passing nod to J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series and Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, and one that is replete with contemporary references to such classic genre television series as the original "Star Trek" itself. He gives readers a whirlwind tour of a supernatural London where homicidal thieves, zealous religious cultists and wizards wage war to seek or to prevent humanity's extinction, seeking a missing giant squid from the British Museum of Natural History's Darwin Centre, a vast repository of stored natural history specimens, including the priceless few collected by Charles Darwin himself during his around-the-world HMS Beagle voyage. Darwin Centre curator Billy Harrow embarks on a perilous trek through London's supernatural realm, seeking not just the missing squid, but his very survival as he is caught in the titanic, bloody struggle involving zealous religious cultists worshipping the giant squid as a Deity, murderous thieves fluent in the art of magic, and diabolical magicians who see the squid as a talisman destined to bring about the "End of All Things". "Kraken" is destined to be remembered as a major classic of contemporary fantasy, written by someone I regard as the best young British writer of his generation, deservingly worthy of ample praise from both critics and fans for being both a compelling storyteller and a most elegant literary stylist. Without a doubt it is quite simply, a most important milestone in Mieville's already distinguished literary career.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another winner from the master of nouveau weird fiction,
By
This review is from: KRAKEN (Hardcover)
Make no mistake: Mieville is unconventional in his concepts and writing style. That's not to say his work is inaccessible; far from. Despite having to look up the odd word in the dictionary ("eschatology" is one of my favourites), Kraken's fruits are within reach.At its core, it is a caper story; a giant squid goes missing (is stolen?) from a museum, and the curator sets out to determine how it happened. He is quickly caught up in numerous layers of intrigue which happens to include a duo of deranged and phantasmagorical killers, competing doomsday cults, the power of the sea, and protective iPods. Mieville manages to weave it together into a cohesive, reality-bending page-turner. His imagination, humour, smarts, and ability to craft a compelling read make him a breath of fresh air in a field of uninspired fiction, let alone that of sci-fi/fantasy. The reward heavily outweighs the risk to one's preconceptions.
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