Lightreads's Reviews > Kraken

My comment on the first Mieville book I read was something like, “brilliant book! Shame it has no soul.” Second verse, etc.

A quick-moving book about a giant squid corpse that is going to end the world. No really. It’s got this absinth-intense whacko worldbuilding – all squid cults and fire that burns time and animal familiar labor strikes. It has the sort of sense of humor you would need to carry off “squid pro quo” jokes. And wonderful writing, of course. Every sentence in a Mieville book has flexion, strength. [Insert half an hour where I try and fail to locate a passage describing London as a benthic mass with the sky depthing above it like the sea. Blew my mind].

Yet, eh. There’s something of the comic book about Mieville’s black hole hero. You know, lots of things pour into him, nothing measurable comes out. The most alive person in this book is Marge (short for Marginalia, like you do) whose story is, um, marginal.

Thing is, when you come right down to it, there’s a giant dead squid at the heart of this book, preserved in weird, saline creepiness in a glass tank. And that’s all there is to it.