I’m not a huge fan of China Miéville. I know he’s a darling of SF, won lots of rewards, but quite frankly I always find that he has a tendency to write bloated texts and he leans towards the sort of pretentiousness that annoys me. He needs an editor who pares his books down in half. Or maybe he should write game texts because he's mostly a cool idea type of guy. So it was with a fair degree of trepidation that I picked up Kraken. The book was set in London, and I did like King Rat, as well as several London set short stories, so I decided to give it a try.
I wasn’t disappointed by Miéville's imagination which presents a secret London full of adversarial fringe cults, magick and memory angels, people presented as communication devices (human radios and phones), talking tattoos, chaotic villains, and a statue-hopping retro-eschatonaught. Unfortunately it’s a mess thrown up on the page.
The books central framework is a “locked the door” mystery, and Miéville displays the same vice he did in The City and the City, with the mystery part being extremely predictable. If Miéville wants to be a mystery writer he needs to study the craft a lot more or at least give credit to the difficult form of detective fiction and work harder at providing a surprising but retrospectively predictable ending (he has the predicitible ending part down). Frankly the Kraken does not deliver in its central narrative of the discovery of the truth in the way I expect a good mystery too. Neither does it deliver a good detective (though some side characters show promise).
Kraken does have a great sense of place, its Miéville’s saving grace, and like King Rat there is nowhere else other than London this story could have been told.
Shrunk in half this would have been an enjoyable book (though with less weirdness). I would gladly play the rpg or the ARG. It might even make good television. Regrettably, I was disappointed by the book. I never really read his Perdido stuff (the first book put me to sleep), but after the last two I can safely say I’m done with the author. Until he finds work in a medium better suited for his creative style.
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