Review: Kraken

Kraken by China Miéville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As often seems to be the case with Mieville - at least for me - his world is cool and detailed and magnificent... and his plot seems largely to be a series of random events happening to people in his cool world. The whole plot with the squid seems kind of nonsensically circular, even by the weird logic of the world our characters inhabit:

Why does the squid have power?
Because people believe that it does.
But people believe all kinds of wacky things in this story, most of which are provably - and often actually proven - wrong!
Yes, but those things aren't true...
Huh?

But I like Mieville's travelogue of apocalyptic London, and I enjoyed some of the characters quite a lot - especially the "extras" around the edges (like Simon the trekkie teleporter, haunted by the ghosts of all his selves that he has killed...) And I had fun visiting all the weird places, like the Embassy of the Sea. So in the end I enjoyed the book quite a lot.

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