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Kraken
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
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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.
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- Unabridged
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Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games, and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy, or otherwise dominate the world as we know it. It’s just not fair. So those of us who are so twisted and sick that we love mad scientists have created this guide.
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HAND DANCING
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-30-15
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City of Stairs
- By: Robert Jackson Bennett
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions - until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world's new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself - first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it - stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy. Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani.
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Something Different
- By Scott S. on 10-17-14
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The Lost Army of Cambyses
- By: Paul Sussman
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In 523 BC, the Persian pharaoh Cambyses dispatched an army across Egypt's western desert to destroy the oracle at Siwa. Legend has it that somewhere in the middle of the Great Dune Sea his army was overwhelmed by a sandstorm and lost forever. Two and a half millennia later, a mutilated corpse is washed up on the banks of the Nile at Luxor, an antiques dealer is savagely murdered in Cairo, and a British archaeologist is found dead at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara.
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Panorama in words
- By ggmomma on 06-03-19
By: Paul Sussman
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Dear Amy
- By: Helen Callaghan
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Margot Lewis is a teacher at an exclusive high school in the English university town of Cambridge. In her spare time, she writes an advice column, "Dear Amy", for the local newspaper. When one of Margot's students, 15-year-old Katie, disappears, the school and the town fear the worst. And then Margot gets a "Dear Amy" letter unlike any of the ones she's received before. It's a desperate plea for rescue from a girl who says she is being held captive and in terrible danger - a girl called Bethan Avery, who was abducted from the local area 20 years ago and never found.
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Stunning debut
- By Mystery Maven on 11-18-16
By: Helen Callaghan
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Thirteen
- By: Richard K. Morgan
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 22 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Marsalis is one of a new breed...literally. Genetically engineered by the U.S. government to embody the naked aggression and primal survival skills that centuries of civilization have erased from humankind, Thirteens were intended to be the ultimate military fighting force. The project was scuttled, however, when a fearful public branded the supersoldiers dangerous mutants, dooming the Thirteens to forced exile on Earth's distant, desolate Mars colony. But Marsalis found a way to slip back.
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WOW, Morgan Does it again!
- By L. on 07-10-07
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Dark Siren
- An Ashwood Novel
- By: Lee Dignam, Katerina Martinez
- Narrated by: Laurel Schroeder
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
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Supernatural bounty hunter Alice Werner loves her job. She gets paid the big bucks to take down her targets and doesn't ask her clients too many questions as long as the money's good. But when a girl goes missing and the case feels all too familiar, Alice can't help but act. Concern for the girl's safety draws her into a risky case. Compassion keeps her involved when the stakes begin to rise. Desperation forces her to call on an old flame for help.
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2 and a half stars
- By Beatrice on 01-07-17
By: Lee Dignam, and others
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Foundryside
- A Novel
- By: Robert Jackson Bennett
- Narrated by: Tara Sands
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
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Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle. But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic - the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience - have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine.
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Parts & Sums
- By CaffineFreeJAVA on 05-07-19
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London Falling
- The Shadow Police, Book One
- By: Paul Cornell
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
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Detective Inspector James Quill is about to complete the drugs bust of his career. Then his prize suspect, Rob Toshack, is murdered in custody. Furious, Quill pursues the investigation, co-opting intelligence analyst Lisa Ross and undercover cops Costain and Sefton. But nothing about Toshack’s murder is normal. Toshack had struck a bargain with a vindictive entity, whose occult powers kept Toshack one step ahead of the law - until his luck ran out. Now, the team must find a 'suspect' who can bend space and time and alter memory itself. And they will kill again.
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Team Quill
- By Tango on 05-03-15
By: Paul Cornell
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Standing by the Wall
- The Collected Slough House Novellas
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Espionage. Blackmail. Revenge. Cunning. Slapstick. State secrets dating back to the fall of the Berlin Wall. All this and more in a tight package of five novellas by Mick Herron, CWA Gold Dagger-winning author of Slow Horses.
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More Please
- By Katy on 01-27-23
By: Mick Herron
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The Electric Church
- By: Jeff Somers
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Avery Cates is a very bad man. Some might call him a criminal. He might even be a killer - for the right price. But right now, Avery Cates is scared. He's up against the Monks - cyborgs with human brains, enhanced robotic bodies, and a small arsenal of advanced weaponry. Their mission is to convert anyone and everyone to the Electric Church. But there is just one snag: Conversion means death.
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Holy Dystopia
- By Amazon Customer on 08-21-16
By: Jeff Somers
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Storm Front
- The Dresden Files, Book 1
- By: Jim Butcher
- Narrated by: James Marsters
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt. Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires....
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Excellent Story, Distracting Sound Engineering
- By Tom on 05-20-10
By: Jim Butcher
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Reconstruction
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Julia Franklin
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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When a young man breaks into South Oxford Nursery School with a gun and takes a group of hostages, teacher Louise Kennedy is fearful. But Jaime Segura isn’t there on a homicidal mission. Bad Sam Chapman - head of the intelligence service’s internal security force, the Dogs - tries to find out what Jaime is after. But the only person Jaime will talk to is Ben Whistler, an MI6 colleague of Jaime’s lover, Miro - who has gone missing with a quarter of a billion pounds....
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worst reader ever
- By mimz on 06-25-21
By: Mick Herron
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London awakes one morning to find itself besieged by a sky full of floating icebergs. Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse’s bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?
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Graze Into It
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Can living artwork die?
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By: Keanu Reeves, and others
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More misses than hits.
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Area X
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Dive into the mysteries of Area X, a remote and lush terrain that has inexplicably sequestered itself from civilization. Twelve expeditions have gone in, and not a single member of any of them has remained unchanged by the experience - for better or worse.
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Book 1: intriguing! Book 2: Zzzz. Book 3: WTF!
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Titus Groan
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In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a profoundly traumatic event. He tries - and fails - to flee. Left alone with his increasingly deranged parent, he dreams of safety, of joining the other children in the town below, of escape. When at last a stranger knocks at his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation might be over. But by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? What is the purpose behind his questions? Is he friend? Enemy? Or something else altogether?
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Only Feeding the Darkness
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Ambergris
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Before Area X, there was Ambergris. Jeff VanderMeer conceived what would become his first cult classic series of speculative works: the Ambergris trilogy. Now, for the first time ever, the story of the sprawling metropolis of Ambergris is collected into a single volume, including City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch.
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Entrancing “weird” novel
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Stand on Zanzibar
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Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically - it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him. Society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers and mass-marketed psychedelic drugs.
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perfect audio experience
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By: John Brunner, and others
What listeners say about Kraken
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Caveat Emptor
- 10-23-10
A New Favorite Author
If you like Neil Gaiman, you may like Mieville. I would not describe this story so much as horror (some of Gaiman's stories are more so), but a philosophical fantasy. Kraken has less steam-punk and science fiction than some of Mieville's other stories, although it has plenty of the fantastic. It is a riot. In this story, it is centered very much in the alternate reality of the City of London, which is a major character in Kraken. If you are an architect or interested in cities, you may love it for this reason alone, but if you are interested in more intellectual sci-fi-fantasy with other influences of science and religion, you may also like it. The characters, moreover, are also more developed, or memorable, than some of his other stories. Lastly, the narration, by John Lee, is of course superb. I listened to it twice.
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19 people found this helpful
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Overall
- cmthomas
- 08-06-10
Arcane Horror A-Go-Go!
Another classic Mieville immersion into the unconscious of London herself - but this time through the ink of a magical giant squid. And not just any giant squid mind you, but god-spawn... Join Billy the museum curator, and preserver of said deus enfant, on his horryifying and often hilarious journey through the seedy underbelly of London's secret religions. Dark magic and evil, dripping beasties spawn from every crevice as Billy tries to preserve his sanity and his life. Fans of Mieville's Perdido Street Station will feel right at home in this occult city on the brink of apocalypse(s?!). Narration of Mieville's rollicking and eerie prose performed splendidly by John Lee.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Eivind
- 10-28-10
A rambling ride
I would call this urban fantasy, except I think it would be an insult to put it on the same shelf as werewolves and vampires in skintight jeans. But it is Urban, yes indeed. And there is a fantasy element here, an element of Gaiman. Anyway, this book is confusing, chaotic, totally weird at times and ostentatiously British. It is so goddamn British that it invents slang on the spot; plausible British slang. It also has one of the best villain duos I???ve read of in some time. Guss and Subby are totally evil, utterly cruel and disagreeable, yet somehow quite charming. This is Peredido Street Station brought back to London. This is the Rat King, only bigger, nastier and all grown up. And John Lee makes it all come alive. So if you can get past the total unwillingness of everyone, including the author to actually come out and clarify anything, the almost obnoxious rambling mysteriousness, then I think you???ll quite enjoy it. I did.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Cynthia
- 11-20-11
Fascinating, but difficult for an audio book
I absolutely love China Mieville. Perdido Street Station is one of my favorite books. I loved the story with Kraken but the plot is so complicated and there are so many characters that this is a real challenge as an audio book. I found I tended to get confused a lot about who, what, when, where. It definitely requires your full attention. Since I already have it in audio I will listen to it again, but I think it would probably be better enjoyed in regular book format.
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Overall
- Bob Winning
- 01-25-11
Uninspiring
This book covers many of the same interesting themes as Gaiman's American Gods, but less successfully. I just found the book to be surprisingly unengaging. Characters speak in riddles, and the author has a writing style where sentences stretch on so long by the time you finish, you forget what the sentence was about. Moreover, the reader has a sing-song quality to his voice, that for me, made it hard to focus on what he was saying. I found I kept having to go back and relisten to the section of the book I just finished, because none of it registered in my brain. I've never had this problem with any other author or narrator. Despite these impediments to getting into the book, I was still able within the first couple of hours to know just how it was going to turn out. As a result, this book pulls off a rare feat, being impenetrable and predictable at the same time.
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Overall
- B. Connelly
- 09-04-10
A new favorite
I was skeptical about this book from the mixed reviews it got. But being a fan of this "type" of book and seeing all the comparisons with one of my favorite authors Neal Gaimon I took the plunge. I am glad I did. This is an excellent story. This often funny, fast paced, and keep you guessing adventure kept me listening far later than I should have. I can see why this book has been compared to some of Neil
Gaimon's and it felt more like Neverwhere than American Gods to me. Though that being said this author has a style all his own. It should come as no surprise to fans of Jon Lee that he gives a pitch perfect performance that's easy to listen to and that he does a superb job in giving each character their own voice. Those who are easily offended will likely find something about which to find offence in this book. Mieville does use adult language and his characters say unflattering things about religion at times so be aware before you plunge in. This is not a children???s book nor is it for the faint of heart. Personally, I wish more people would be so creatively profane and was impressed by many a turn of phrase heard in this book. This book is now on my short list of books that will be listened to many times. Definitely a new favorite.
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Overall
- Fernanda Von Christen
- 08-08-10
Boring
I read this book and got so bored by the for me uncomprehensible flood of meaningless words that I had to put it down.
I do not know whether this book would have been any better if I was smarter or would have invested time into a backround research - but as it is it was a waste of money and time.
I cannot recommend this book to anybody. Sorry.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Jefferson
- 09-17-11
Hybrid Romp through Magic, Science, Faith & London
When the giant squid star of the Museum of Natural History's collection of preserved specimens goes missing, mild-mannered curator Billy Harrow finds himself mixed up with magical gangsters, bizarre cults, occult bounty hunters, a fiendish father and son hitman team, and the stunningly ineffectual though intrepid FSRC (Fundamentalist Sect-Related Crime Unit) in an apocalyptic competition through the surreal underworld palimpsested onto London to find the missing kraken. Who took the embalmed critter and why and where are they keeping it and why is its fate wrapped up with impending Armageddon?
Billy has to navigate a fermenting sea of dissident gods, millennial churches of biology, and specimen jar angels of memory; unionized familiars, gunfarmers, Chaos Nazis, and rabbi exorcists; pyromancers, necromancers, and Londonmancers; sentient seas and cities; and myriad cultural references, among them Moby-Dick, Barbie, Teletubbies, Amy Winehouse, Virginia Woolf, Buffy, Galactica, Cthulhu, Clint Eastwood, Captain Kirk, and the ghastly truth behind the Star Trek beam-me-up procedure.
And that list barely scratches the surface of the mad fertility of Kraken. At times the myriad references and ideas risk swamping the reader/listener into numb fatigue, and at times the novel threatens to become a frustrating police procedural with various characters asking similar questions and getting similarly incomplete answers, but at its best, Kraken crackles along with ebullient imaginative energy, its climax is cool, and the whole work has more unpredictable twists, original plays on cultural artifacts and genre tropes, and interesting ideas about faith, science, and city-life than most genre novels dream of mustering.
And John Lee does his usual fine job, managing to keep it professional even while enjoying himself reading lines like:
"Keep something in your pocket for me to get into. So I can get to you quick."
"How'd you feel about a Bratz doll?" Dane said.
"I've been in worse."
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Overall
- William R.
- 02-01-11
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.
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Overall
- Don M
- 10-25-10
Wild story
I couldn't finish it. I loved the fantastic story, but the John Lee's strong voice, coupled with the accent, is too much for this American listener. He reads with all the intensity of an end-of-the-world movie preview. Every single word has gravity. He overpowers the text. I hope to finish this story in book form.
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