China Mieville, Kraken [Library of Babel]

I'm not a huge Mieville fan, but the descriptions I read of Kraken sounded like good fun. As I like fun books, and a fun book written by China Mieville seemed sufficiently improbable that I just had to see it, I picked it up a little while ago, and read it over the last week or so while biking to nowhere or waiting for SteelyKid to go to sleep.

The book follows the adventures of Billy Harrow, a biologist working for the Darwin Center in London, who was responsible for preserving the giant squid they have on display there. It's the pride of the collection and a big tourist draw, so when Billy leads a tour group in and finds that it has mysteriously vanished, along with its giant tank, well, that's quite a shock. It also brings him to the attention of the magical underworld of London, drawn into a battle between crime kingpins, squid cultists, and a looming apocalypse that is somehow centered on the missing squid. With the help of Dane, a security guard at the museum who was also a Krakenist, Billy has to evade religious cults, criminal wizards, and the police long enough to find the missing squid and stop the end of the world.

I was halfway through this when I realized why this sounded good: because it's a Neil Gaiman novel. It's basically Neverwhere with cephalopods. That's both a strength and a weakness: whether intentionally or not, the story is a pitch-perfect imitation of Gaiman, who is a very good and enjoyable writer. At the same time, there's nothing here that you could point to that would uniquely identify the text as Mieville. Maybe the incorporeal union organizer, but that's about it, and I'm probably only saying that because it felt like the least essential of the many subplots. If you reprinted dustjackets identifying it as a Gaiman book, nobody would think twice.

So, you know, if that description sounds interesting, and you like Neil Gaiman, you'll probably like this. If you read Neverwhere or American Gods and said, "this is good, but it needs more squid," well, you'll be ecstatic. It goes on a little longer than it really needs to, but it's a perfectly good, fun read, just as it appears.