By Martin Leese
I found out about this novel after reading an interview with the author in the free Metro newspaper, having previously been a fan of his work. The reason that I say previously is that after multi award winning novels, I began to enjoy his books less. This could be put down to China Mieville’s attempts to break into other markets like thriller writing or children’s writing not appealing to me as much, or maybe just that his attempts at these genres were less successful than where his passion and real talents lie. It could also be put down to his prodigious output leaving him spread a little thin. Whatever the case, his wonderfully imaginative and epic award winning “weird fiction” novels in the vain of Viriconium or Gormenghast seemed to be behind him.
With Kraken however, Mieville has returned to similar pastures to his debut novel, King Rat, in which a seedy underworld lurks beneath, or rather parallel to modern day London. It is commendable that he hasn’t just revisited the world of New Crobuzon, which brought him his Arthur C Clarke and Bram Stoker awards. To the many people who have never read one of his novels, they are always initially hard to understand as they are underpinned by sweary, incomprehensible steam punk dialogue, much like A Clockwork Orange, and Mieville is such a prodigious imaginer, his fully formed, alienating worlds leave you disorientated. The effect is to leave you immersed in a very strange city and society, the machinations of the protagonists always clouded.
In his latest novel, Mieville is seemingly making a concession to the reader by providing a central character who is as much out of his depth as they are, making it altogether more accessible, presumably in a bid for some of the commercial success which he will one day achieve.
The concessions to commercialism will only be noticed by his fans, to everyone else this is a wonderfully constructed world, with so many different ideas to keep up with, it has the feel of several novels condensed into one, with a pace so hectic you will either complete it in one go, or have to read each page repeatedly to absorb the different strands in every paragraph.
Octopus gods, the spirits of ancient Egyptian slaves, vulgar police officer computer algorithms and teams of avatar beetles being some of the major players. A gangster imprisoned in a tattoo and the ocean itself communicates via messages in bottles deposited through a letter box.
It’s wonderful in its scope, and vivacious characters, and its murderous underbelly is never short of marvels. For anyone who has never read any of his previous work: this is the ideal starting point.
A Krackin’ read.
Kraken, by China Mieville, review: 4/5
