Kraken

[sawyl]

In order to take my mind off the current political madness, here are a handful of thoughts on China Mieville's Kraken.

When the preserved body of a giant squid is stolen from the Natural History Museum, curator Billy Harrow quickly discovers that not everything in London is as it seems. There are snarky police witches, talking tattoos, kraken worshipers, and all sorts, all of whom are desperately trying to find the squidnapped corpse before it can accidentally trigger an apocalypse.

As a novel Kraken clearly owes a substantial debt to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. The similarities are obvious: everyman is caught up in London's magical underworld, pursued by a pair of unkillable assassins, and ends up discovering his true self. There are also riffs on a number of favourite geeky themes, including an extended joke cum philosophical exploration of the problem of the Star Trek transporter, and a nice side plot about the unionisation of wizardly familiars which mixes the politics of the NUM with the ideals of Hermione Granger's SPEW.

The characters are, with the exception of poor Billy who's a bit on the anaemic side, strong and well drawn. Kath Collingswood, the police witch, is a particular delight. She's young, sarcastic, free and easy with the uniform rules, and not terribly committed to the more humdrum parts of her job — at one point, she ends a missing persons interview with the line, "Rest assured we're going to leave no stone unturned in our search for wossname and thingy", which doesn't exactly win the victim over. But she gets away with it all because, despite the bad language and the outward air of don't care, she's sharp and very good at putting the magical mockers on the members of London's supernatural community.

Goss and Subby, the pair of assassins, are also well drawn. While Subby remains completely silent throughout, Goss churns out a constant stream of sinister nonsense that compounds the horror of the stuff that he actually does. Even Marge, the girlfriend of one of Billy's friends, is treated pretty well. Surprised by the strength of her reactions when her boyfriend vanishes, she starts tracing out the patterns of occult London through the internet, ending up at an big end of the world get-together protected only by a possessed iPod with a taste for Sarah McLaughlan.

Although the book is enjoyable and the characters are generally great fun, it does have a few problems.

Firstly, main character suffers and seem dull in the company that he keeps; although this might be intentional on Mieville's part, with Billy the everyman a deliberate contrast to the oddities all around him. Secondly, there are a handful of scenes towards the end, including a significant death, that are handled in a way that seems to drain them of their emotional impact. But this may simply be my problem. My third problem is that the pacing of the denouement doesn't entirely work. Every time the book seems to conclude, it picks up again and goes one to yet another climax in a way that I'm not sure really works. But these are minor quibbles; the book is, on the whole, a fun solid read.