China Mieville's Kraken
China Mieville
There are three things I’ve come to expect in a China Mieville novel; winding and poetic—yet intentional—prose, an intimate, ironclad understanding of the genres of science fiction and fantasy, and an ability to find creativity, humor, and imagination in modernity and mundanity. (If you didn’t like that sentence then I wish you luck with Kraken.)
“A few mad exaggerations, alright, within a couple of days: swear to fucking god, they were like throwing grenades and pulling out all kinds of crazy knackery, it was out of control. Whatever. As if the story, if big enough, reflected glory on the teller.”
Okay, fine. Another expectation is that I won’t know where the story goes or how it will get there. I’ve read hundreds science fiction novels and short stories, so I often find myself seeing the plot of a story before it plays out. This is never the case with Mieville.
As soon as I read Perdido Street Station, an earlier Mieville novel, I decided that it was my favorite stand alone fantasy book. Now that I’ve read Kraken I’m not sure what to think. It’s fantasy—urban/weird fantasy to be specific—but it’s unlike anything I’ve read. It’s delightful and distractingly interesting. It’s definitely my favorite…something.
Before I get into the book, I also suggest looking up video’s of Mieville speaking/lecturing. When I first struggled—yet enjoyed—the prose of Perdido Street Station I thought that this guy was some thesaurus junky who really wants to push the limits of a sentence. However, after watching some videos of him lecturing I realized that this is how Mieville thinks and speaks.
He’s brilliant and has a lot to say; sometimes it’s just hard keeping up. I have had two friends quit reading Perdido Street Station because they said that it was exhausting. They enjoyed what they had read, and wanted me to tell them how it ended, but they could no longer hang on as Mieville pulled them through an intricate story told through constant, beautiful, zigzag sentences.
They take longer to read (for me at least) but they are masterworks of modern science fiction and fantasy.
Kraken
First and foremost, Kraken is about ink and everything that ink makes possible; tattoos, art, writing, history, and science—as well as sustained argumentation, thought, and religious tradition. Ink can do more than you can imagine, but also exactly what you can imagine. It is either elevated to magical status in Kraken, or it’s that Kraken reveals ink for the magic that it already is.
If that doesn’t make sense then you probably haven’t read Kraken, or you have, but you were so hypnotized or confused by the breadth, width, and depth of Mieville’s story and prose that you didn’t have time to examine the work further. Kraken definitely has re-readability. It is ripe for literary scholarship just as it is available for a joy ride through a London fun house. J.K. Rowling would feel unaccomplished if she took a glimpse down one ally of Mieville’s version of the magical London that lie between the cracks and behind the ordinary.
The story begins when those two worlds—ordinary and magical—are set on a collision course for the End of Days. Billy Harrow—an academic, a scientist, a curator at London’s Museum of Natural History, a boring man on the ordinary side of London—finds himself pulled into the magic side of London when a prized giant squid (Kraken) and its hundreds-of-gallons-full tank disappear without a trace. It turns out that the Kraken is believed to be a god of the deep, and that it holds power; power that many cults, gangs, and authorities wish to use for their own purposes.
“And yes, no, it couldn’t have, no disappeared, so many metres of abyss meat could not have gone… There were no giant tank- no squid-shaped holds cartoon-style in the wall. It could not have gone, but there is was, not.”
The story pits Billy and his new mystical allies at the Church of the Kraken against foes ranging from a living tattoo on a man’s back, to a powerful pair of mystical beings named Goss and Subby, to animated ink and paper and to time and to fire. They have help. Namely an ancient Egyptian idol spirit named Wati who lives in statues and figures and who runs the labor union for golems, homunculi, familiars and all manner of magically crafted items and pets.
"There were pickets of insects, pickets of birds, pickets of slightly animate dirt. There were circles of striking cats and dogs, surreptitious doll-pickets like grubby motionless picnics; and flesh-puppets, pickets of what looked like and in some cases had once been humans."
Besides the setting and the innovative cast of characters, Mieville also engrosses the reader with his inventive magic concepts and creations. For example, Mieville echoes the sentiment that art reflects life, and that life reflects art, but he adds to it in Kraken by showing how magic can reflect art. This is exemplified by the fact that Billy discovers a fully functional Star Trek phaser—powered by magic. Engineers in real life have claimed to be inspired by Roddenberry, so why wouldn’t sorcerers and mystics find similar inspiration in their spellcraft?
By the end you will discover that Kraken also contains many interesting and endlessly debatable themes and ideas. Mieville explores determinism vs free will, Creationism vs Darwinism, and Science vs Faith among others. He has clearly done his homework when it comes to philosophy, religion, and eschatology. When I finished reading I found myself drawn to the thought that not knowing that something exists or not believing that something exists might be as good as it not existing. Do truths come to be only once we, or a majority of us, discover them and subscribe to them? Does reality change us once we understand it better, or do we change reality by our new ideas?
“Everything's fit to be worshipped.”
To give much more would spoil the book. No doubt some may claim that I’ve already spoiled a bit of the adventure and awe that you experience when reading Kraken, but I am confident that this is simply a taste. The sea of words and ideas that you fall into when you open Kraken is vast and deep. Even if I were to describe the book in full, you would no doubt discover more magic, humor, and dizzying climax than I could ever explain.
Who Should Pick it Up
People who are intrigued by what I’ve written above, or who love humor, fantasy, and weirdness should give it a few a chapters at least. The rewards are worth the time you’ll put in.
Who Should Leave it Be
1. People who don’t like the long flowing prose. Again, Mieville has a style of writing which can be exhausting. As noted above, his sentences are long and winding; though Kraken has more of an excuse to do so because it is a story that plays with writing, ink, and thought as a theme. The imagery is intoxicating, but after a while it can be overwhelming.
2. People who grow wary of too many twists, turns, characters, and subplots. Like his other stories, Kraken is extremely convoluted. I enjoy that—reads like a Cohen brothers’ film with personality, action, fun, and all—but I have heard some complain that his work (especially Kraken) meanders too much for them. There is so much going on that some people have trouble remembering the ins and outs, or feel that the plot was too muddy for a satisfying conclusion.
3. People who want a book that has three strikes. There are only two things that I can think of to possible complain about. So if you want a book with three problems, then leave Kraken be.