Kraken

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Like his magic, his world is overtly symbolic, and as his magic is an allegory for the act of writing. I did not feel very invested, it did not have the now-expected thought-provoking quality, and did not leave me in the vague state of unease that I came to cherish as a part of my Miéville reading experience . He does use historical details, but since power comes from reputation, not lore, he need not delve too deeply. The protagonists are hitting one dead end after another, following this thread to that thread and back again.

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.It's just that it in NO WAY measures up to the usual amazing and brain-popping experience I came to expect from CM. Like any classic movie monster, it works its fascinating magic only as long as we don't care to inspect the structure that supports the illusion, or questions its premises.

Were there dozens of passages which I had to re-read four or five times, because sometimes the author's preference for affectation proves stronger than his desire to communicate clearly? And you have the detectives over here, the friend over there, the protagonist here, and they all meet up at the end . Those who have read and enjoyed Kraken may also enjoy Mark Charan Newton’s Nights of Villjamur, Adam Nevill’s Apartment 16 and NK Jemisin’s A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. He constantly wants to get word to Leon’s girlfriend who he barely knows, but doesn’t seem to think his family might want to know as well.Again, this seems like a misunderstanding of how cults view the world, or else, more likely perhaps, just a failure to apply any real-world psychology to the setting. Throw in characters like Wati, an ancient Egyptian spirit who can only manifest in carved or created figures (like statues or dolls) and is now a union leader for mystical familiars, or Simon, a teleporter who is the world's biggest Star Trek fan (and dresses accordingly, complete with working phaser), and you begin to get a sense of just how large this world is that Mr. It’s not that it just doesn’t feel odd enough (there is that) … it doesn’t have the same twisted depths of personal injustice. But there’s an important difference: established religions have the weight of tradition and, to varying degrees, society behind them. Harold Bloom: Maybe you're just using book reviews as a way to avoid working on your real writing project.