January 2012, #2: Kraken, by China Mieville.
So, Kraken. A preserved giant squid disappears from the Darwin Centre, and the mollusc specialist who first noticed the disappearance finds himself drawn into a vast magical underworld of squid cults, sorceror gangs, animal familiars, and competing visions of the end of the world.
It’s kind of awesome.
There’s a lot going on in here, and I won’t say that it all fits smoothly together, because it doesn’t, but there’s a kind of magic in the messiness. Kraken has some of the appeal of Perdido Street Station, in that it’s a book that shows real and genuine affection for a city, for the way that cities are layers of history and clashing demographics and mismatched neighborhoods. Given what I know about Mieville’s politics, I wasn’t particularly surprised by Wati’s backstory–a revolutionary-minded shabti who fights the system and becomes a labor organizer for the supernatural underworld. (Oh, uh, stop reading now if you don’t want any surprises ruined.) On a more subtle note, I did like how the dramatic climax of the book (one of them at least) rested on some minor characters refusing to be sidelined. (Marginalia! Literally!) Paul’s power play against the Tattoo (and then Goss and Subby) was particularly amazing–Paul is a classic throwaway character who doesn’t seem to know he’s supposed to be a throwaway.
But yeah, mostly it’s all about the squid gods and possibly-insane cops and the mild-mannered mollusc expert discovering his inner magical badass. It’s a good ride.
Posted Monday, January 9th, 2012 at 9:47 pm. Filed under: personal.
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I liked the concept, but my god this book was a mess. By about a hundred pages in, it had blown apart into about a hundred jagged pieces.
I’ve had this problem with Mieville’s books before, but I keep reading them anyways — there’s so much else about his stuff that I like. (The one that felt the most focused to me was The City and the City.)
I didn’t find the Tattoo all that intimidating. I think he has something of a Dalek problem — “I am scary and powerful but I can not move anywhere! I can be incapacitated with carefully applied duct tape! Booga booga!”