Kraken by China Mieville (2010)

[AE35Unit]

Well this is a strange one!I had this book for Christmas one year as I thought it might be interesting. It certainly started well and at one point it was hard to put down, but Mieville appears to have a weird writing style, inventing words and phrases out of nowhere, and using ' big clever words' to describe a situation or object unnecessarily. This gets old very quickly, and its not exactly a small book!

Basically a squid goes missing from a museum and our hero, Billy Harrow, museum curator, gets drawn into a world of weird god worship, strange rituals, and magic, with a potential end- of-world scenario.Still sounds interesting and the story is, but the writing style I found awful, heavy and meandering.

Not a keeper!

 

[biodroid]

Thx AE35unit, i tried Perdido Street Station but bug head women making ornaments from spit just got to me.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

but the writing style I found awful, heavy and meandering.

Not a keeper!

Me too. Very disappointing book. Shuttling Billy everywhere so that plot can happen to him is not cool.

 

[AE35Unit]

Me too. Very disappointing book. Shuttling Billy everywhere so that plot can happen to him is not cool.

That didnt bother me. Being unclear and 'with it' did.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Either way, it's his worst novel - and I say that as a disappointed fan. I didn't much care for Embassytown either. If Railsea is unreadable I'm giving up on him.