A friend of mine once referred to Little Birds by Anais Nin as “the most literate pornography you’ll ever read.” I feel like Kraken by China Mieville is the most literate (non-illustrated) graphic novel you’ll ever read.
In Kraken, Mieville continues to use his obtrusive phrasing, hefty vocabulary, and wild imagination to keep things interesting. On the downside, the story is less ambitious than Perdido Street Station, and (dare I say it?) kind of shallow. Fans of Clive Barker’s urban dark fantasy will be happy to be reading something very much along the lines of Barker’s The Great and Secret Show or Imajica. You can count me among these fans for certain. Here’s the setup:
The basic plot-line is “Regular guy discovers an alternate world where he is important”. Our protagonist is a museum employee in the business of preserving specimens. One day the pride and joy of the museum, a preserved giant squid, is magically stolen from the museum, and the theft sets off a series of events that will mean the end of the world unless our protagonist and his new-found friends (and enemies) can figure out how to prevent it. Along the way, we meet the arm of the London police which deals with the supernatural, an evil magician kingpin and his horrible henchmen, the fortune telling guild of London, a striking union of familiars, a kraken-worshiping cult, and various other sundry members of the unseen magical side of London.
The good news is that it is amazingly imaginative and interesting. I was left feeling a little flat in the end, however. Somehow there’s not enough scary stuff. The two main villains of the book, a pair of menacing men named Goss and Subby, somehow lose their menace about halfway through. The final reveal of the real villain behind the end of the world was anticlimactic and surprisingly cliche.
Can you tell that I’m torn? Some of the dialog is stilted. Some of the language gets in the way. There are amazing things, though, like the Ocean’s Embassy. I guess that I wished the book was a little less chaotic and maybe more focused. At the same time, it was a good read. Let’s see those numbers:
Creepy Factor: 3 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 3 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5 (?!?!)
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 4 out of 5
Final result: I’m a fan of China Mieville and I’m always rooting for him. I like how he aspires to be the Nabokov of horror. In this case I feel like he applied his considerable talent to a tale that would have made a better short story.
Kraken by China Mieville – Del Rey – 2010
Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. See you next time!
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