It’s hard to explain what China Miéville’s Kraken is like. There are so many things going on in this novel that it’s hard to know where to start. There’s a multi-layered conspiracy, a giant squid, cults, and several apocalypses. But even that doesn’t come close to describing this book. I got close last week when I was talking to someone else who had read the book. Reading Kraken is like watching a virtuoso musical performance. Many passages in Kraken read like Miéville riffing on weird and wonderful ideas without exploring them in much depth. That’s what my fellow reader and I could agree on. We both wished that the author had taken more time to flesh out the alternate London where this book takes place. For my part, I would add that the characters–with a few exceptions–were hard to sympathize with, if only because they got lost in the weirdness of the setting.
The beginning of this novel is straightforward enough. Protagonist Billy Harrow discovers one morning that his museum’s prize giant squid has gone missing. Instead of regular police, Harrow finds that the disappearance is being investigated by the “cult squad”–a pair of cops and their scholar-consultant. From there, Harrow gets a crash course in metaphor-mancy, magical crime, faith, prophecy, and a whole host of other weirdnesses. There’s so much going on here that its hard to keep your feet as a reader. You’re tempted to try and solve the mystery, of course, but there are so many players and clues and stuff that it’s an overwhelming experience to read. It’s not the sort of book you can just fly through. Not only do you have to read slowly, carefully, but you may have to take breaks to digest what you’ve just read.
Kraken is astonishing in its creativity and originality. You can tell that Mieville had a lot of fun writing it. There are some ideas–like the literal knuckleheads and the communist shabti spirit–that are a hoot to read about. And I love the idea of metaphor as magic, where music on an iPod can literally carry characters away. But after a while, it seems like all sizzle and no steak. At the end, the big problems get wrapped up far too neatly and far too easily.
Unlike The City and the City, Miéville’s previous work, it’s as if Kraken, ironically, has no soul. It’s hard to get worked up over the characters or the looming apocalypse(s) because none of it seems real enough. I guess that’s my big problem with the book: very little actually rang true. The twin cities from The City and the City, while just as weird, had enough detail and plausibility to make me believe that they might actually exist.
I won’t say that I didn’t have a good time reading Kraken. I did. I guess it just wasn’t what I was expecting. It had all the creativity that I was hoping for. It was a terribly interesting book to read. But the lack of characterization made it hard to really get into this book, to bond with it and care about it as much as I cared about The City and the City.