Kraken

By: China Mieville

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

With this outrageous new novel, China Miéville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read this—or any other—year. The London that comes to life in Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring about—or prevent—the End of All Things.

In the Darwin Centre at London’s Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centre’s prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis dux—better known as the Giant Squid. But Billy’s tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air.

As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizens—human and otherwise—are adept in magic and murder.

All of them—and others—are in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be.

©2010 China Mieville (P)2010 Random House

Critic reviews

"Mr. Miéville's novels - seven so far - have been showered with prizes; three have won the Arthur C. Clarke award, given annually to the best science fiction novel published in Britain…. [H]e stands out from the crowd for the quality, mischievousness and erudition of his writing…. Among the many topics that bubble beneath the wild imagination at play are millennial anxiety, religious cults, the relationship between the citizen and the state and the role of fate and free will." ( The New York Times)

Another wonderful story.

Another wonderfully inventive book. The narrator is one of my favorites also. A great listen.

Couldn't finish it

I love China Mieville's writing and I really liked where this book was going. I'll have to read a hard copy though - I could not deal with the narrator's sing-song style. It sounded like he thought he was reading some semi-documentary style comedy, like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Inappropriate and confusing.

Dynamite narration improves an exceptional text

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Absolutely. As a book, I think this is the best modern fantasy I've read and John Lee's narration adds tremendously to the text. Usually I would recommend a book as densely written as this (neologisms, parentheticals, interrupted dialog, etc.) be read, but Lee's narration adds great depth. He does a great job communicating the confusion of the protagonist and the menace of the antagonists.

What did you like best about this story?

Modern fantasy always has a problem that there are a bunch of machina out of which the author can pull a deus. Miéville does an exceptional job establishing the power relationships between a pantheon of gods (many of which seem mutually exclusive) and various magical cabals. The pace at which confusion gives way to a sketched outline of the rules of the game and then ultimately to the series of internally-logical events of the climax is exceptional.

Have you listened to any of John Lee’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I've not, but I will absolutely seek him out in other audiobooks after this.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, I can't say that it was. It's too dense a meal for that. But I very much enjoyed how I did listen to it, which was in 1-2 hour blocks.

Krakalackin'

Great story, but the narrator's various accents tended to blend, making distinguishing the characters difficult at times. Fantastically creepy Mieville, as always!

unusual, but awesome. def recommend

its unusual, but an awesome book with a very unique mythos it draws from. highly recommend if you are into supernatural-esque mysteries that involve the end of times.

Glorious Insanity

I was skeptical but this was a great listen. John Lee's narration fit almost perfectly for each character and the pacing was spot on.

Kraken is a hilarious, but still interesting story with a few turns that may surprise you.

A bit too long, but weird and entertaining

I first bought this book because it was referenced by Jacob Geller in his video essay "Fear of Big Things Underwater." I have a fascination with sea monsters and the kraken in particular, so I gave it a listen. And while there are parts where the particulars of London become tedious rather than peculiar, I kept going. And it was worth it, because this book is weird in absolutely the right way, and even manages to have heartfelt character moments amid the Lovecraftian horrors and supernatural gangsters.

The narration is also brilliant and gives all the characters a unique voice and tone that adds to the whole work.

Heartily recommend.

Giant Squid, Talking Tattoos & Star Trek Ray Guns

This book will either excite you are bore you. If you are into anything and everything Science Fiction and really like "out there" stories, you should settle into this really well. There is a little something for everyone in this book and the characters, plot and crazy sub-plots (think cockroaches on strike) all make this surreal story even more interesting with each passing chapter. I am really sorry to say this book was read by the wrong person (sorry John Lee!). While it was well read, the characters and delivery just made this already hard to follow book even more difficult. I think if someone like Neil Gaiman read this it would have been much better. Be prepared to listen intently to this book... if you miss even a few sentences you might miss some very important story details.

Couldn't stop lisitening

Once this book got started I couldn't stop listening. I found myself offering to do yard work and things around the house that would mean I could listen to a little more. The plot is excellent. The characters are both complex and incredibly creepy. Mieville creates this world that is just a tiny bit strange and those little things make all the difference. It's believable enough that it's even scarier. Fascinating, fast paced, and keeps you guessing.

Hard to follow: shrouded in an inky cloud

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

I found this fantastical romp enjoyable for its imagination and inventiveness but problematic for three reasons: it was hard to follow, especially when listening without the benefit of thumbing back through pages; the main character, Billy, lacked agency; and I found the narrator, John Lee a bit stuffy and inflated.

For me, the confusing story line was the biggest detractor. Multiple factions kept popping up throughout the novel, and the time was not always devoted to truly understand the various powers and motivations of these dark forces. Occasionally, important plot points transpired with such speed and lack of explanation that I wasn’t even sure what had happened. It is moments like these when I most keenly feel the disadvantage of the audiobook form.

Miéville nearly anthropomorphisizes London, a tact which I liked for the most part. Yet it began to grow a bit tiresome because the descriptions remained too frequently in tell mode, failing to give me a visceral sense of the sentience of the city.

For me, Billy was problematic as a main character. He just seemed a victim of circumstances for much of the book, and I didn’t know why his goal, find the squid, was particularly important to him. Billy began to show more initiative after he goes through a trope-filled training regimen that felt lifted from a Hero’s Journey plot check list.

For my taste, John Lee was not the best choice in narrators for this tale. While he excelled at characterizing the piratey Goss, he fell short on two more critical characters, Billy and Collingswood. I would have preferred a younger, hipper voice to accompany me on this trippy jaunt through London.

On a positive note, I especially enjoyed Miéville’s creativity in crafting a kraken-centric language, e.g. “squid pro quo,” for his lunatic Krakenists. Also, the villain who appeared in the form of a tattoo painted onto an unwilling host was brilliant. Finally, I loved the feuding dooms-dayers who couldn’t agree on the nature of the imminent apocalypse. Lots of brain candy here.

Ultimately, however, the story gets bogged down in a plot reminiscent of a squid: many tentacles, arching in frenzied directions, presumably united by some core but shrouded in an inky cloud.