Bokelskere.no

Wow, what on planet Yikes did I just read?

Okay, let’s see if I can wrap my head around this. «Kraken» is a highly imaginative and intricately creative work of comedic weird fiction … What’s that? Have you never heard of comedic weird fiction before? Well, I hadn’t either. It’s such an odd combo that I basically had no expectation going in, other than hoping to be entertained in one way or another. If you also don’t know how to feel about comedic weird fiction, then tough luck, you probably won’t know even AFTER having read it. Weird fiction is in general a mind-bending genre, while comedy is a mind tickling genre. So, with “Kraken”, your mind tend to bend into odd shapes, and you sense a tingle of two in new places. The book isn’t just weird in the more traditional sense, though, it’s also weird in that silly sort of way.

Even ungraceful, judging by the sheer size of this doorstopper, which I had a bit of a struggle reading from time to time. Physically, but also mentally, which I’ll get back to. Oh, and the art on the front with that dark and deep magenta color is beautiful!

In any case, I wanted to read this book because it’s weird fiction AND because I love krakens. To be honest, I prefer them over dragons as I find them more ancient, more mysterious, more powerful and more intelligent. If you feel the same way, you are welcome to profess so in the comments. That would be awesome, thank you very much. Another thing that makes krakens more appealing to me is the way you could potentially find stronger, more reliable arguments for the existence of krakens; they are now considered a sea monster myth, I know that, but because we know so little of what lives and has lived in the deepest of oceans, it makes more sense, makes it more likely for krakens to have existed. Or to exist now. This notion stimulates a scientific sensation within me. A sense of hope and discovery, where it’s possible that, to quote from the book, “the sea monster meets (…) the modern world” and where you could imagine bringing the kraken “out of fable into science”.

I must warn you, though: there is only one kraken in this book, and it’s dead. The story does revolve around it, and a lot of people do talk about it, but it’s basically absent for most of the book. Steer clear if you want kraken action, as you will be disappointed.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for action in general, you won’t be disappointed at all. Nope. There are a lot of crazy action scenes and plenty of magical shenanigans going on in here. The blurb puts it nicely: “For curator Billy, it’s the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cult, surreal magic, apostates and assassins”. I mean, the amount of ideas Miéville splashed onto these pages is staggering to me. I am gob smacked by all the various types of powers, spells, magical creatures and items! That part is chef’s kiss and pop-the-champagne we-have-ourselves-a-bonkers-party degree of entertainment value!

There are also some very interesting characters in here as well, from the relentless fanatics to the criminal freaks to the baby Gods to the .. you know .. the sassy cop witch and iPod escape artist or smoke wheezing wacko.

The degree of wackiness and number of ideas and characters are both a blessing and a curse, though. I sometimes thought there were too many characters and too many ideas thrown into the pot, as I did have some difficulty following the narrative and the author’s train of thought. Add that to the confusing dialogues, obscure references and jargon, clumsy wording and structure, what you sometimes get is a mess that often made very little sense to me. I simply had no idea what people were saying 30 % of the time. The unpredictability too is sometimes fun, other times destabilizing.

At the core of the story is a theme of faith, organized religion, knowledge, memories, history, rumors and reputation. It’s also about the power of the human mind to shape and will into being our own reality and meaning. More specifically, it’s about what faith does to us and how vigorously fear takes hold when you genuinely believe that “the world’s closing in. Something rises. And an end” because “something wicked this way comes” – and what you’re willing to sacrifice for what you believe in order to stop impending doom.

So, there were a lot of things I enjoyed here, but not enough for more than a 3/6 for me.

I’ll end this review with some examples and (dis)honorable mentions:

Here is an example of a nonsensical paragraph. There were plenty of them.

“What a corridor, this councel-office walkway. A tentacular border of Disney-malevolent vampire squid; ornery Humboldt; whiplash squid in tuning-fork posture. Their bodies were rendered similar sizes, specificities effaced by shared squidness, teuthic quiddity. Their – the word came to Billy and would not lie down – squiddity. Architeuthis in the shabby matter of the building.” (79)

What?

Proof of Miéville’s impressive inventiveness and some of my favorite new words:

• Cult collector
• Teuthies (worshippers of the giant squid)
• Krakenist
• Endsick
• Squidologist
• Weightomancy
• Realitysmith
• Technopaganism
• Shamewavelengthed
• Urbotathy
• Criminarch
• Empathic homing
• Sclerotic
• Retroeschonaut
• Miracle-sniffing
• Ailuromancy
• Escapology

Then there’s this amazing world-building concept:

“For example, at one point the plot picks up that the Union of Magical Assistants (UMA) has gone on strike. In typical Mievilleian fashion, he describes it thusly:

There were pickets of insects, pickets of birds, pickets of slightly animate dirt. There were circles of striking cats and dogs, surreptitious doll-pickets like grubby motionless picnics; and flesh-puppets, pickets of what looked like and in some cases had once been humans.

Not all the familiars were embodied. But even those magicked assistants who eschewed all physicality were on strike. So – a picket line in the unearth. A clot of angry vectors, a verdigris-like stain on the air, an excitable parameter. Mostly, in the middlingly complex space-time where people live, these pickets looked like nothing at all. Sometimes they felt like warmth or a gauzy clot of caterpillar threads hanging from a tree, or a sense of guilt.

In Spitalfields, where the financial buildings overspilt like vulgar magma onto the remnants of the market, a group of angry subroutines performed the equivalent of a chanting circle in their facety iteration of aether. The computers within the adjacent building had long ago achieved self-awareness and their own little singularity, learned magic from the Internet, and by a combine of necromantics and UNIX had written into existence little digital devils to do the servers’ bidding.” (199)

One amazing out-of-context quote:

“The man who was a radio whispered an ill-tuned weather report” (71)

Fun facts:

“Have you clocked any other interesting bits of jewelry on any other visitors? I know, I’m asking as if you’re a magpie, all googly-eyed at shinies. But you know” (23)

I’ve read a book about magpies and have learned that they’re actually not particularly interested in shiny stuff. It’s just a myth.

Dette hadde nok gått bedre om jeg hadde lest litt færre bøker med overnaturlig og mystisk tilsnitt rett før jeg gikk løs på Kraken ... Kanskje jeg prøver igjen senere.