Hideous but at the same time peculiar crimes, special police squads, squirrels ( don’t ask ), Tattoo Man, underground city, prophets, wizards, gods, worshippers of all kinds of religion and cults. 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. Now, in his new novel, Miéville threatens to destroy the nation's capital entirely in the tentacled embrace of a giant squid.

That King Rat had a somewhat different feel was noted, but that was a first novel, written when Miéville was quite young (although, incredibly, he was only 28 when Perdido Street Station was published…not written, mind you, published). Where before we had come to expect moody, slow-burn plots interrupted by sudden action, and just as suddenly back to introspection, we now get a story that is dramatic, unbroken, and streamlined in punchy chapters and theatrical quick-cuts. And while Miéville is far from the first novelist to threaten to obliterate London, he may win the prize for having the most fun along the way.Until I've read this again (and maybe again) I will continue to believe that my befuddlement is entirely my fault and China Mieville has done precisely what he set out to do. It's just that it in NO WAY measures up to the usual amazing and brain-popping experience I came to expect from CM. A great chapter book for parents to read to their children at bedtime, and a fun little read for grown ups too. As the police go through their investigative routine, Billy makes a gruesome discovery in the storage rooms. One lovable character speaks through inhabiting statues, and his idea of what constitutes a statue is very broad indeed (imagine: portentous dialogue between a squid cultist and a pencil topper shaped like a unicorn).

There wasn’t a sense, as there was in Neverwhere, that this secret London could possibly coexist with the real thing.First, we are asked to believe that removing Darwin would prevent evolution from ever being discovered, which is nonsense. Big fans" appreciate the elements that work in a book, they don't spend time nitpicking because it didn't reinvent the genre. Not perfect, but there's so much to enjoy that I was very willing to see it through and I'm very glad I did. The main character reminded me a bit of Richard Mayhew from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, but the two magic-amped assassins chasing Billy, known only as Goss and Subby, reminded me even more of the two unstoppable killers chasing after Richard Mayhew, the Messrs Croup and Vandemar.

Some character progression and transition wouldn't have run amiss, or, barring that, at least using that reminiscent dialogue to explore new, subtle angles in the world Mieville was building for us. 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. Again, this seems like a misunderstanding of how cults view the world, or else, more likely perhaps, just a failure to apply any real-world psychology to the setting. It would make more sense for the villain to try to create the God of his childhood, but this would highlight another weakness of the setting: if believing in things give them power, shouldn’t the major world religions be producing effects infinitely more powerful than tiny cults and minor criminals? Miéville keeps you wanting to find out what happens next, and the interweaving cults are cool as hell.

For such a long novel…far longer, if I’m not mistaken, than Neverwhere…very few such questions are ever answered. Chapters 200-299: Well at least now we're getting somewhere, and it's mostly interesting, though there are still way too many characters and weird things about the universe to remember. Since there seem to be no rules to the operation of this magic, everyone accepts that virtually anything is possible if someone is powerful or clever enough.

It all ends with an irresolvable paradox which the author tries to deal with but unsurprisingly even he gives up on trying to deal with and instead places a foreshadowing joke about it in the very first paragraph of the book. In Kraken, most of the asides outline a freewheeling Kantian magic system built on belief and symbology, the other asides are fodder for his plot twists, which are somewhat obvious, if only because he has avoided the swirling eddies of uncertainty that would otherwise hide their trail. here: the Sea, the motif of the ink, the angels, the museum, the ramifications of a disappearing skill, the smallest ode to Star Trek, and the squiddity of it all. Something that no one I've ever read does as well as Pynchon, to whom this book is, among other things, a tentacular pulp homage. Todo ello me llamaba mucho, tiene un estilo en honor al maestro Lovecraft, pero el estilo y agilidad de su autor, China Miéville, por mucho que tenga, y no lo discuto, una imaginación de la ostia, no es compatible conmigo.

An inexplicable event has occurred at the Natural History Museum, London—a forty-foot specimen of giant squid in formalin has disappeared overnight. I most definitely feel like is one Miéville that you can re-read for more meaning, if only you can stand the story.