THE NON-READING RHEUM: KRAKEN (2010)

 

I'm in a reading-group that reads a fair amount of 21st-century fantasy and SF, and this means I end up skipping a fair number of readings because I don't like much 21st-century metaphenomenal fiction.  I had read two China Mieville books before and didn't like either. The premise of KRAKEN sounded a little more promising than the other two books, involving a preserved kraken specimen stolen from a museum by a kraken-worshipping cult, resulting in an innocent museum curator getting pulled into shenanigans. It sounded a bit like a comedic version of Umberto Eco's FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM, which involved an ordinary schmuck having a rare MS translated, only to find himself targeted by occult groups who want the translation's secrets.

Well, KRAKEN was indeed intended to be comedic, but I found it less amusing than a bad Terry Pratchett book. I didn't mind that the protagonist was an ordinary schmuck; that's often typical for POV characters. But Billy Schmuck had three characters who functioned as "initiators"-- that is, they're all agents of some group that monitors occult organizations-- and THEY should have offered comedic eccentricity. Instead, Mieville's writing often suffered from what I call "archness support"-- that is, the tendency of many British humorists to think that if a character says something in an arch manner, that tone automatically makes the line funny.

Rather than just not read this 500-page waste of time, I skimmed it so that I would at least be able to follow what others in the group said about the reading. I learned that London (where the whole novel takes place) is chockful of ancient, unworshipped deities. Sounds a little like Neil Gaiman's 2001 AMERICAN GODS, right?-- except that very few gods participate in the action. Mostly it's Billy Schmuck, his allies and some other support-characters running around interacting with the occult groups. Possibly to avoid the usual Gothic trappings of magic-makers, Mieville specifies that most of these occultists are fans not of horror but of science-fiction. Why? I think just because the author thought it was funny to imagine occultists as SF-fans. I'm surprised he left the comics-fans alone: the only mention of comics was a reference to Doctor Octopus.

Maybe other readers would find some of the erratic ideas here beguiling if those readers liked the characters I found tedious. Someone must have liked KRAKEN, since it won a Locus Award. But all the book called forth in me was comparisons to the lesser works not only of Terry Pratchett but also Robert Anton Wilson, Clive Barker and a bunch of other authors who seem to get lost in their own perceived brilliance.