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. Join us in this classic LitStack Rec of China Mieville’s Kraken.
In This LitStack Rec of Kraken by China Miéville
Kraken by China Miéville
Creepy Can Be Fun
I enjoy making recommendations of books that I’ve found creepy and/or disturbing for one reason or another (all good, for the most part). For this creepy recommendation, I’d like to share with you the author that I find creepiest, and his book that to me is the creepiest, for all the best – but not the most typical – of reasons.
The author is China Miéville, and the book is Kraken.
Kraken is pure Miéville – all the fantasy, the astute use of language, the subverting of the known with completely unexpected or bizarre twists or reimaginings – all that exists here. It’s also perhaps one of Miéville’s most ridiculous of books (and I say that fondly), full of pop culture references and religious cult hyperbole; I mean, c’mon, one of the central entities is the Church of Kraken Almighty. Yes – the cult of the squid.
Hail Squid! No, Hail the Language
But… this is China Miéville. Nothing is ever simple; there are no single layers in his work. While the story itself might be somewhat, um, hard to swallow, the characters are anything but (even if they are not even remotely “typical”). They are marvelous – and at times, horribly, horribly evil. And weird.
The crime boss, who goes by the moniker “Tattoo” is, well, a tattoo. Killers for hire Goss and Subby? In my mind, even more terrifying, creepier, more nightmare-inducing than Neil Gaiman’s Croup and Vandemar. Then there is Wati, an ancient Egyptian spirit who is kind of like a labor organizer for striking supernaturals, Dane, a fallen Krakenist seeking some modicum of redemption, and the central character, Billy, who is…. normal. Heart-wrenchingly normal.
But even as marvelous (or horrifying) as these characters are, what really is at the heart of Kraken is its language. Miéville is an intensely erudite writer, but in Kraken the writing is arcane, archaic, convoluted and mesmerizing – often it borders on the liturgical. It washes over you, and at times, you effin’ drown in it, gloriously.
Pipes filled with brine that spied on the inhabitants of buildings watching, listening, hunting. You might obscure the attention of the Londonmancers, with the complicity of a treacherous borough, with strikebreaking hexes strong enough: but nothing could stay hidden from an inquisitive sea.
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S’Wonderful, S’Marvelous…
Yes, Kraken does not bow down to a structured story; it’s not as narrative driven as expected in speculative fiction. Miéville himself says that Kraken is an “undisciplined” book, “a dark comedy about a squid-worshipping cult and the end of the world. It takes the idea of the squid cult very seriously. Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they’re not absurd.”
And yea, well, there’s that end of the world part, too. It’s creepy, bizarre, squishy and it smells of dark, dank, moldy secrets. And it’s marvelous.
You’re welcome.
~Sharon Browning
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About China Miéville, Author of The City & The City
China Miéville is a New York Times-bestselling author of fiction and non-fiction. In 2015 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2018 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction. His work has won various prizes, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award and the British Science Fiction Award, and has been shortlisted for the Folio Prize and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. He has previously been Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Warwick University, an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Law at Birkbeck, University of London, and Writer-in-Residence at Roosevelt University in Chicago, IL. He is one of founding editors of the journal Salvage.
You can connect with China Miéville on his website, and on Facebook.
Other Titles by China Miéville
Perdido Street Station
The Scar
The Book of Elsewhere
Other LitStack Resources
Be sure and look at our other LitStack Recs for our recommendations on books you should read, as well as these reviews by Lauren Alwan, and these reviews by Rylie Fong, Allie Coker, and Sharon Browning.
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