REVIEW: KRAKEN

Cover Photo: Elisa Lazo Valdez/Arcangel Images

KRAKEN

BY

CHINA MIÉVILLE

ISBN: 978-0-333-98951-7

Pages: 481

Publisher: Macmillan

Publishing Date: 7 May 2010

On the cover:

Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears?

For curator Billy Harrow it's the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. 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.

A god that someone is hoping will end the world.

   This is urban fantasy. Or to be specific, what urban fantasy was during the nineties, before it somehow got usurped to define something that even its fans have problems differentiating from paranormal romance.

   Miéville does cities very well, and he does the London of this story excellently. The world building is great, this London seems alive and breathing, and it is well realized enough that it doesn't take much suspension of disbelief to see that it could be this way.
   There are a lot of religious cults in this book, and some readers may find that these are a bit of a stretch. But you don't actually have to plow too deep into the myriad of religions that exist today to find out that they are entirely plausible. Some of them are even pretty close to what is out there in our world.
   The organizations that Miéville populates his London with are also well within the reasonable. I especially liked the FSRC, and have no problem seeing that such a unit could exist even in our world.

   The book begins with events that seem normal enough, but the strangeness start before the first chapter is finished. And from there on its a journey into a weird and slightly askew London that is well worth a visit.

   We also quickly get to know most of the principal characters, and they are for the most part excellent company throughout the story.
   There was one exception from this for me , Marge. She seems to be far to normal to take things in her stride the way she does. And this grated on me for parts of the book.
   I also found Billy Harrow a bit to diffuse at times, he seems to both deny what is happening, and be fine with everything at different parts of the story. And I felt the switch in his character to more active towards the end of the story was more of a plot necessity than natural progression of him as a character.
   These are however minor points, the setting and characters serve the story well. And Miéville does both of these parts of the novel expertly.

   So to what I found as a strength in The City & The City (review here), the prose, and Miéville's use of it.
   It just does not work here. Technically it is excellent, as always with Miéville, but it does not serve the story, rather it detracts from it. At times it seems as the author uses his grasp of the English language to confuse the reader, and make it harder for him/her to understand what is going on.
   Several times there are long and unnecessary complicated passages that slows down the action. And this got on my nerve several times, and it really made it hard for me to keep reading at times. That these long passages are largely absent when there is more happening, and never really adds anything to the story, also made them feel a bit like padding.

   Miéville's tendency to write literary fiction prose just doesn't fit with keeping a reader present in a fantasy setting, in my opinion. His obfuscating prose style really did this story a disservice. And I found myself wishing, at several points, that he had written this in the same style as Un Lun Dun, and saved his obvious literary fiction aspirations to when he is actually writing a literary fiction novel.

    I have to say that I was actually pleasantly surprised with how good this story was after my experience with The City & the City, but at the same time I felt that Miéville has come full circle, and is now back where he was in Perdido Street Station. I am hoping that his next book will be as good as The Scar, my favourite book of his so far.

   If you are a fan of the urban fantasy that is represented by books like Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, you should find this an excellent read.
   And if you happen to be a fan of the UF wing of urban fantasy, I urge you to read this, and see what we who read urban fantasy in the 1990s think about when we hear the name.

Reviews: The City & the City

LINKS: China Miéville  Macmillan

REVIEW: THE CITY & THE CITY BY CHINA MIÉVILLE

Cover Image: Anne Laure Jacquart/ Arcangel Images

THE CITY & THE CITY

BY

CHINA MIÉVILLE

ISBN: 978-0-330-513517

Pages: 372

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Publishing date: 15 May 2009

On the cover:

When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Besźel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger. Borlú must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other.

   

   This book is in a way rather schizophrenic, or at least it wants to be. At its heart is a Crime story, and it is seemingly set in a fantastical landscape of parallel worlds. 
   
   The crime part of the story is unfortunately mediocre and unoriginal. I've read a lot of crime and I've read this crime-story several times before. The tired crime-cliches of the police detective who goes his own ways, the female assistant who will go to any length for him, and several others are here. The crime itself, and the solution to it is pretty standard for a crime novel too. So in isolation the crime aspect of the story is nothing more than your average crime novel. 
   
   The Fantasy or Science-Fiction elements are what should set this book out from other crime novels. It is however debatable whether there are any SFF elements in the book at all, apart from that it is set in a fictional city in a fictional land, something that usually is not enough to make something SFF.
  
   I really liked the idea of the "unseeing" that Miéville introduces in the book. Unfortunately it never gets past the idea-stage. Several times in the book we are told that "unseeing" has to be learned, and that the "two" cities exist not in one place, but are divided by some unexplained lines. We even get told that while "unseeing" you may step over the people you "unsee", so it's basically just ignoring things.
   And this is where it all falls apart for me. The idea is great, but without further exploration of how it came about and why, it's just a lazy macguffin. A bit like saying the sun turns Clark Kent into Superman without any further explanation as to how and why.


   It does not help either that when it is needed to put a twist on the plot, in Part 3 of the book, we get an explanation of the "borders" between the "two" cities that is at odds with the earlier one. The introduction of "Breach" just adds to the poor execution of the good idea that is in this book. More so when we never get an explanation for how they know someone is "crossing borders", something that is the only thing keeping those "borders" up. 


    The only thing that saves this book from being total crap is a interesting concept, and Miéville's excellent technical writing skills.
   But I would not recommend you read this book if you don't want to read it as an example of how a great idea and excellent technical skills are useless when the story is flat and badly realized. 
   This reads as a mediocre crime-story with an idea for the first two thirds of a urban fantasy novel plastered in to discuise the lack of originality.


   Although this book didn't work for me, I will give China Miéville another chance at showing me he isn't a has-been by reading "Kraken" soon.


LINKS: China Miéville  Pan Macmillan