Kraken

Product Information

On another note, it's easy to compare Kraken to the Ben Aaronovitch "Rivers of London" series, which I read before I found Kraken, but Kraken for me conjured up more of a gritty atmosphere, whereas the RoL series are a bit lighter, though still very good. After reading this novel (and having begun some of his more recent works), I get the sense that China Miéville is not for everyone; I suspect that many of his plots may be weirder than some readers wish to entertain, and his writing style can be byzantine in a way that I find impressive - I LIKE an author that makes me look up words I didn't know - but which might be off-putting to those who wish to completely immerse.

Like any classic movie monster, it works its fascinating magic only as long as we don't care to inspect the structure that supports the illusion, or questions its premises. It looked like a great ending then this dude did this shit and talk about deus machina … and I don't even understand exactly what happened or how it worked. But alongside the exuberant displays of imaginative vigour, Kraken is Miéville both paying homage to and poking fun at urban fantasy.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. I suppose this is the China Miéville version of a fun and accessible novel, although this is still Miéville so it never quite abandons traces of horror and his characteristic dense prose. Londonmancers, odd end-of-days cults, occultist criminals, semi-mystical gangs, weird knacks of a thousand different heritages and mystical archeological remnants all vie for the readers attention, the language growing more and more convoluted - I suspect CM is secretly in love with a monstrous theusaurus, striving to ressurect terminology not heard for decades or ouside eclectic circles, to which he adds dozens or even hundreds specimen of freshly minted terminology like hinterLondon (sic! Seriously, this is the first time in my Miéville-reading experience (6 books, a few short stories) that I felt the pacing was poorly done. Of course, Miéville actually takes his cults-as-normal conceit a step further and has them all mix and associate.

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.I did not feel very invested, it did not have the now-expected thought-provoking quality, and did not leave me in the vague state of unease that I came to cherish as a part of my Miéville reading experience . 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. The quick, action-packed plot, the melodrama, the cliffhangers, and the idealized characters are all familiar to any pulp fans. So I give props to China Miéville (you're only getting that acute accent once in this review, so enjoy it) for offering up perhaps the first blatant lolcat reference in what could be termed a major novel (certainly the only one to receive a starred review in Booklist). It’s not that I didn’t know what was going on, but I think a lot of lines intended to be humorous fell flat for me because I was spending too much time decoding the slang.

Despite being a fantasy thriller, Miéville manages to integrate some hard-hitting critiques of religion along with a philosophical critique of the teleportation thought experiment*. Tan expositivo, una trama lisiada y rara con altibajos a rebosar de personajes y cultos con calificativos dobles y triples. And something about reading Mieville, both of the ones I have picked up, anyway, makes me feel like my eyes are dragging through molasses or maybe I'm actually stoned (oh shit, did I really read this book? It might just be that the creature he's been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it's a god. Miéville is a bit of an acquired taste, he assaults the reader with an unrelenting bombardment of ideas and thoughts which may result in some sinking under their weight.The story begins when the preserved corpse of a giant squid disappears from a museum along with the embalming fluid and cylindrical tank it resided in. Billy is on a race against time to find the squid—or kraken—before whoever stole it uses it to start an apocalypse.

While I originally rated this slightly lower, it grew on me the more I thought about it, and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to read it again.It's the reading of it that seemed jarring, almost as if it was a mirror to the jarring concepts that butted heads all throughout the maze of the story. In interviews Miéville identifies as an atheist, and I guess to him believing in virgin birth or reincarnation is just as fanciful as his squid cult. Kraken is not an every-person book, some will love it, some will hate it, some will enjoy it but be left occasionally bemused. 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). But there’s an important difference: established religions have the weight of tradition and, to varying degrees, society behind them.