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David Katzman's Reviews > Kraken
Kraken
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The most fun you can have with a giant squid this side of Japanese octopus porn. I take that back. It’s the most fun no matter which side of octopus porn you’re on.
This is the first China Miéville work I’ve read so I wasn’t tainted by any of his previous books. I went in with few expectations. And how did I feel coming out? The dude rocks.
Here's the the milieu: Magic exists in modern day London, and, hidden behind mystical distractions, a secret society of competing religious cults, for-hire magicians, and mafia mages vie for power. The inciting event of the story is the disappearance of a giant squid from a local museum, which sets off a series of events that might just lead to the end of the world. Who stole it? Why? And how can this apocalyptic destiny be averted? Such is the drama and fun found in Kraken.
The main character, Billy Harrow, is a hapless young Londoner who works at the museum where the squid was preserved as a tourist attraction. After the squid disappears, he becomes a “person of interest� to the police, to various cults, including the Kraken-worshipping cult, and to two psychotic killers hired by a gang leader who seeks the magic potential of the squid. The main character reminded me a bit of Richard Mayhew from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, but the two magic-amped assassins chasing Billy, known only as Goss and Subby, reminded me even more of the two unstoppable killers chasing after Richard Mayhew, the Messrs Croup and Vandemar. They are merciless, enjoy killing, and seem too powerful to kill. Like Mayhew, Billy is caught up in a magical underworld he had no idea existed and has to figure out how to survive and avert tragedy. But, really, the similarity ends there. Billy is confused like Richard, but he gains his own magical powers that help him along the way. And while Richard is trying to save a friend, Billy is trying to save the world.
Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that a book that features an undersea leviathan and “the sea� as a character also includes an abundance of red herrings. (Pun intended?) That’s right, Miéville keeps you guessing as to the perpetrator of the plot to destroy the world until the very end. Although I did call it early, I wasn’t positive.
Despite being a fantasy thriller, Miéville manages to integrate some hard-hitting critiques of religion along with a philosophical critique of the teleportation thought experiment*. In other words, this is a nerd-powered thriller. Well, nerdy in content, Miéville in person looks more like a badass punker weightlifter.
Regarding that critique of religion (this is only for those who’ve read the book or never intend to) (view spoiler)
The book has perhaps two weaknesses. The main character, Billy is one. He was a bit of a cipher. Had a rather vague personality. The other weakness is a muddle toward the middle. The plot gets somewhat expository in order to weave a web of tangled conspiracies � too much insider politics for my taste among the cults, which tended to bog down the story. Nonetheless, it absolutely deserves five stars because I couldn’t put it down. Miéville keeps you wanting to find out what happens next, and the interweaving cults are cool as hell. Well played, well played.
*I debunked the teleportation thought experiment in my review of I Am a Strange Loop and the experiment itself was also brought up (in a strange loop!) in a debate I recently had with Manny Rayner which starts here and ends here.
This is the first China Miéville work I’ve read so I wasn’t tainted by any of his previous books. I went in with few expectations. And how did I feel coming out? The dude rocks.
Here's the the milieu: Magic exists in modern day London, and, hidden behind mystical distractions, a secret society of competing religious cults, for-hire magicians, and mafia mages vie for power. The inciting event of the story is the disappearance of a giant squid from a local museum, which sets off a series of events that might just lead to the end of the world. Who stole it? Why? And how can this apocalyptic destiny be averted? Such is the drama and fun found in Kraken.
The main character, Billy Harrow, is a hapless young Londoner who works at the museum where the squid was preserved as a tourist attraction. After the squid disappears, he becomes a “person of interest� to the police, to various cults, including the Kraken-worshipping cult, and to two psychotic killers hired by a gang leader who seeks the magic potential of the squid. The main character reminded me a bit of Richard Mayhew from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, but the two magic-amped assassins chasing Billy, known only as Goss and Subby, reminded me even more of the two unstoppable killers chasing after Richard Mayhew, the Messrs Croup and Vandemar. They are merciless, enjoy killing, and seem too powerful to kill. Like Mayhew, Billy is caught up in a magical underworld he had no idea existed and has to figure out how to survive and avert tragedy. But, really, the similarity ends there. Billy is confused like Richard, but he gains his own magical powers that help him along the way. And while Richard is trying to save a friend, Billy is trying to save the world.
Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that a book that features an undersea leviathan and “the sea� as a character also includes an abundance of red herrings. (Pun intended?) That’s right, Miéville keeps you guessing as to the perpetrator of the plot to destroy the world until the very end. Although I did call it early, I wasn’t positive.
Despite being a fantasy thriller, Miéville manages to integrate some hard-hitting critiques of religion along with a philosophical critique of the teleportation thought experiment*. In other words, this is a nerd-powered thriller. Well, nerdy in content, Miéville in person looks more like a badass punker weightlifter.
Regarding that critique of religion (this is only for those who’ve read the book or never intend to) (view spoiler)
The book has perhaps two weaknesses. The main character, Billy is one. He was a bit of a cipher. Had a rather vague personality. The other weakness is a muddle toward the middle. The plot gets somewhat expository in order to weave a web of tangled conspiracies � too much insider politics for my taste among the cults, which tended to bog down the story. Nonetheless, it absolutely deserves five stars because I couldn’t put it down. Miéville keeps you wanting to find out what happens next, and the interweaving cults are cool as hell. Well played, well played.
*I debunked the teleportation thought experiment in my review of I Am a Strange Loop and the experiment itself was also brought up (in a strange loop!) in a debate I recently had with Manny Rayner which starts here and ends here.
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June 23, 2010
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June 1, 2011
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Brad
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rated it 5 stars
Jun 20, 2011 07:52PM
I am waiting until I am finished reading (listening) to this to read your review. It is taking much constraint.
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Haha! Wow, I was sure you read this already.
I know. I tried when it first came out and hit a weird reading wall, abandoning all four books I was reading, including this. Instead of trying to read it again, I've been listening, and I am glad I did. I am enjoying it immensely.
man, if you like this one, wait until you read perdido. i read kraken first too. PSS might make your head explode.
Glad to hear it. I met him at Chicago Comicon C2E2 and he said he would maybe read my second novel...to email his agent. Which I did and they never responded. Oh well.
Holy shit! David ... you haven't read Perdido? I can't wait to read your review.
Finally finished the book and read your review. I'm in total agreement with your spoiler. And I too thought this was a wonderful work of genius.
Thanks, Brad! I'm psyched to read his other books now.Btw, I met him at the last Comiccon here in Chicago, C2E2. He's kind of a buff dude, obviously works out a lot. Kind of a badass looking guy in person. He said I could email his agent, and he'd consider reading my second manuscript...but they totally blew me off and didn't even respond to my email. Lame.
He was nice enough, I should add. I'm sure he gets a million requests to review manuscripts. But they could've at least been polite and responded.
Indeed. I am not a fan of agents. At all. I had one once, and it was not a good experience.
Despite being a fantasy thriller, Miéville manages to integrate some hard-hitting critiques of religion along with a philosophical critique of the teleportation thought experimentJust finished Kraken, and, with all respect to you and Miéville, it's far from clear that your argument is correct. Roger Penrose, in The Road to Reality, has some surprisingly concrete discussion of the physics of teleportation. He concludes that it is in principle possible, but only if the process destroys the original subject. This is essential, because otherwise you could easily violate quantum uncertainty by making multiple copies of yourself - in other words, Penrose thinks the Star Trek "Heisenberg suppressors" are nonsense.
But if you do destroy the source and transfer its information to the target using quantum entanglement (Penrose explains how to do this in the single-particle case), then the question is whether source and target really are different. From the point of view of normal quantum physics, they aren't, in any meaningful sense.
Of course, I admit that it may be risky to take an argument valid for a single particle and say it still holds for a human being. But all the same. And if someone can arrange a panel at a Star Trek convention with Miéville, Penrose and a representative of the technical side of the show, I predict it'll be standing room only.
Good Sir Manny. I always enjoy your respectful disagreements. You haven't given me too much to go off here, but i believe this goes back to the same argument we had before regarding the universe pathways.To me, it doesn't matter if the universe thinks the objects are identical in every way...due to the nature of consciousness (as I see and apparently as Mieville sees it). If an object is duplicated and moved from one place to another (teleportation), the object to the rest of the universe is identical. The object does not have a consciousness, it does not have a point of view.
I'll go back to my original example. Manny is teleported by the creation of an exact duplicate at another location. The original Manny is evaporated in the process. Manny 2 believes he is in every respect Manny. The world also thinks he is Manny. But what happened to the original Manny? Let's time delay it (which Penrose says is impossible) to see what happened to the original Manny, just for the sake of clarity.
Manny 1 gets into a teleportation device. Manny 2, an exact duplicate in every fashion, is created on Mars. But the teleportation device malfunctions and Manny 1 is not evaporated. He stays alive. Now there are two Manny's in 2 different locations. Manny 1 exits the teleportation device and he is immediately shot by a jealous husband who found his book reviews to be too sexy. Manny bleeds today and croaks his last words, "Penrose!" Manny 2 goes about happily thinking he is Manny and everyone else thinks he's Manny, too. But the original Manny 1 died and won't be back. In fact, he felt himself die.
This is exactly what happens even if there is no time delay. The original Manny is killed. His duplicate lives on, but his original point of view is eliminated. I don't see how "transferring its information" makes any difference. It "can't work" with multiple Manny's, you say, but as a thought experiment to me it demonstrates more clearly what is going on.
What am I missing?
Damn! We haven't had a good philosophical argument for way too long!There's an interesting question here about what constitutes an admissible thought experiment. You suggest:
Manny 1 gets into a teleportation device. Manny 2, an exact duplicate in every fashion, is created on Mars. But the teleportation device malfunctions and Manny 1 is not evaporated. He stays alive.
Now, as Penrose points out, if you take quantum physics seriously then this type of malfunction is in principle impossible. It's just as impossible as travelling faster than light - it makes no sense. You aren't duplicating the information (which suggests that you'd be able to keep a copy), you're using quantum entanglement to move it from one place to another.
If this is so, then in what sense are the original and the transported versions of me different? If the laws of the Universe require that one must disappear for the other one to be able to appear, what grounds do we have for insisting that they are different, just because the transition is discontinuous? It seems to me that you could just as well argue that the "you" of two seconds ago is a different person from the "you" of now - the old one no longer exists, and has been replaced by the new one. He was just lucky that he died a very peaceful death.
Good question ... Well, it is perhaps arguable that the me of 2 seconds ago is a different me, i suppose, when you get down to it. It all relates back to how we define "me" and the "Self."Our mind thinks it is continuous obviously....mainly because our point of view remains relatively continuous along with our memories and our bodies. If we fall asleep on an airplane and wake up in a different country with completely different weather, we are usually disoriented. It is like teleporting. But what if you were knocked out and then your brain transplanted into another body, one that was radically different? Would you be the same person? My point there being that with a radically enough change, you might no longer be the same person.
These comments are probably beside the point. I think you've stumped me this time. I see the issues as having to do with point of view and what happens to the original point of view in the original body - does that point of view open it's eyes and see Mars like it fell asleep on a rocket? Or does that point of view never open its eyes and instead another being (it's exact duplicate) open it's eyes? That to me is the crux of the matter. If it can never be tested because it's impossible then you could never ask Manny 1 what happened to him. Manny 2 would always insist he was continuous with Manny 1. So we'd never really know the answer.
I suppose it depends on what "...move it from one place to another" really means. Is it being "reassembled" or is it more like dipping out of spacetime and back in again at a different location? Because with a single particle, you don't really have to reassemble an electron or a quark. But with any complex object, obviously ... assembly required. I think if it's some form of reassembly, then the original Manny will be dead. If it's more like dipping out of space and back in again (does that even make sense?) then maybe it could be the same Manny continuously. I'd like to read this Road to Reality now! Since information can't travel faster than the speed of light, how does the information get from point A to point B in his example?
You ought to read my new novel. :-) The main character's Self is utterly transformed - he loses almost the entirety of his memory but for a few glimpses of his past ... and then his body is ... well, i don't want to give it away. :-) So then the question becomes how does he go on living while no longer being/feeling like him Self.
wow you must have loved this book so much! =P
Hey Erin - yeah, this book was a total blast!
"The book has perhaps two weaknesses. The main character, Billy is one. He was a bit of a cipher. Had a rather vague personality. The other weakness is a muddle toward the middle. The plot gets somewhat expository in order to weave a web of tangled conspiracies � too much insider politics for my taste among the cults, which tended to bog down the story."This is so spot on. Exactly my two points of critique on Kraken (and the reason I think this is not Miéville's best work - I prefer the BasLag series and of the more recent books The City And The City).
Now I'm glad I follow your reviews. Where I have just vague criticisms, never fully phrased, you nail them down precisely.
Thanks!
Haha! Thanks again, Saphana. Consider me your subconscious. You'll have to alert me to other great stories that you have vague criticisms of so I can clarify your thoughts for you. ;-)
I have waited and waited for someone to review this book -- and, fortunately, it was a good review -- my own personal favorite is the talking tattoo, but there are a thousand little facets to this jewel, eh?
Thank you, Bondama! Yes, the talking tattoo was an amazing concept.
Excellent review of a book I've abandoned. I enjoyed This Census-Taker but haven't been able to get into his urban fantasy books. Perhaps I just don't care for the genre? It is funny you compare this to Gaiman's Neverwhere because I hated that book (although I did manage to finish it). I do hear the echos of Gaiman's book when thinking of this one.
Your spoiler about religion and the rewriting of history--that's even more prevalent now. Fascinating (and scary) to me that some people think that merely rewriting and leaving out the parts of the world that don't agree with their political or religious agenda makes them disappear. Of course (as history as shown), they are right. What's not recorded, or recorded from the victor's POV, usually stands the test of time and comes to inaccurately represent historical truths--even if they aren't.
Kristina wrote: "Excellent review of a book I've abandoned. I enjoyed This Census-Taker but haven't been able to get into his urban fantasy books. Perhaps I just don't care for the genre?It is funny you compare this to Gaiman's Neverwhere because I hated that book (although I did manage to finish it). I do hear the echos of Gaiman's book when thinking of this one.
Your spoiler about religion and the rewriting of history--that's even more prevalent now. Fascinating (and scary) to me that some people think that merely rewriting and leaving out the parts of the world that don't agree with their political or religious agenda makes them disappear. Of course (as history as shown), they are right. What's not recorded, or recorded from the victor's POV, usually stands the test of time and comes to inaccurately represent historical truths--even if they aren't."
Thanks for the comments, Kristina! I did see your review that you got bored and dropped this one. Miéville is hot and cold for me. The Last Days of New Paris, two stars, review here: /review/show... Embassytown, three stars, review here: /review/show... and Perdido Street Station, one star /review/show... .... but Kraken was my 5 star winner that has kept me giving him a chance repeatedly. He's so clever and imaginative, but his characterization seems to be a weakness, and he seems to be trying too hard to bring an idea to life rather than let the story find the idea. At least, that's my overall impression to date. Even though I've been disappointed by him, I wouldn't be surprised if I tried him again at some point.
I only read Neverwhere as a graphic novel because I hated American God's SO MUCH, that I will never read another novel by Gaiman. I'm not surprised you didn't like that novel.
Yes, it's very scary how history is rewritten even live as it happens. We had a President gaslighting the country for four years, lie upon lie. Rewriting the past and the present, it's the right-wing Nazi method of weakening the opposition and sowing confusion. And it's also bound up with science-denial as well. If experts are worthless then any conspiracy theory could be equally valid because all that matters are FEELINGS not FACTS.
David wrote: "Kristina wrote: "Excellent review of a book I've abandoned. I enjoyed This Census-Taker but haven't been able to get into his urban fantasy books. Perhaps I just don't care for the genre?It is fu..."
I did feel as if China Miéville was trying too hard with this one. I felt as if he was trying to make it funny but it wasn't funny. It didn't feel authentic to me.
I just DNF'd THe City & the City. I just can't get into his novels. I haven't rated them though because I think my dislike/lack of interest is more about my personal taste than the novels themselves being seriously lacking/poor writing, etc.
Oh, we're definitely in the era of Feelings over Facts. In fact, I would say we've gone beyond that and Feelings are considered Facts by some people. I wish Critical Thinking was a class every American was forced to take in school.
