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Ladataan... Kraken (alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi 2010; vuoden 2010 painos)– tekijä: China Mieville
Teoksen tarkat tiedotKraken (tekijä: China Miéville) (2010)
  
Books Read in 2015 (1,756) » 7 lisää Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta.  resoundingjoy | Jan 1, 2021 |  Well this was a ride. Kraken gives us a world as diverse and shifting as Bad-Lag, with a bizarre and fascinating array of characters - sentient tattoos, Warhammer 40k-esque Nazis, X-Men style mages, special agents, sentient animals, spirits, fortune-tellers, pseudo-zombies, assassins....what I'm trying to say is its a full package. They are not well-rounded characters - the use of allegory and symbolism is just as if not more prevalent in Kraken than it is in Scar or Embassytown. I do wish the rules were a tad more clear and the world a bit more fleshed out - knack magic in particular seems to do whatever the plot requires. The other Mieville novels I've read were very different in pacing, more contemplative and thoughtful compared Kraken, which has a pace that best resembles the movie Crank. The chapters are short and punchy (I would say like Dan Brown's but don't want to insult this book) and there is near constant action. Because it moves fast and is introducing new elements, side plots, characters, etc. it can be hard to keep up with - this is a book that might benefit from a re-read to catch that I missed last time. (  ) kaitlynn_g | Dec 13, 2020 | the first two-thirds of this book were great, the last third was A LITTLE DISAPPOINTING. DAMNIT. write me some unofficial crossovers with neil gaiman's neverwhere, though, and all will be forgiven. ( ) kickthebeat | Nov 1, 2020 | Started unusually sensible but the fluidity of Miéville's reality quickly seeped through it all and he maintained his New Weird style. It's not Bas Lag but entertaining. ( ) rickycatto | Sep 9, 2020 | This book is fantastic. The plot is wonderfully unpredictable, the characters are interesting, engaging, well-written. Easily the most memorable book I've read in a while. Funny, exciting, enthralling. (  ) pamerc | Sep 7, 2020 |
 Kraken utilises Miéville’s common setting of London, albeit a strange London. This otherness beside the familiar is a strand in his work evident from King Rat and Un Lun Dun through to THE CITY AND YTIC EHT. This one started out as if it may have been written with a film or TV adaptation in mind - one with a potentially light-hearted take - but soon veers off down strange Miévillean byways which may be unfilmable. For these are the end times and cultists worshipping all manner of weird gods abound. It begins with a kind of locked room mystery as a giant squid, Architeuthis, has been stolen - formalin, tank and all - from its stance in the Darwin Centre, a natural history museum where Billy Harrow is a curator. He helped to prepare the squid for show and is thought to hold the knowledge that might allow all those interested in its recovery to find it. The police fundamentalist and cult squad, the FSRC, is called in to help investigate the disappearance which becomes more involved when Billy discovers a body pickled (in too small a jar) in the museum’s basement. And these are merely the first strangenesses to be encountered in this book. We also have the consciousness of a man embedded within a tattoo, a tattoo which moves and speaks. Then there is the double act of Goss and Subby - two shapeshifting baddies from out of time (they shift other people’s shapes) - and weird sects, cults and mancers of all sorts. Never short of incident and brimming with plot the novel is probably a bit too convoluted, with too many characters for its own good, and its one-damn-strange-thing-after-another-ness can verge on overkill. But this is an unashamed fantasy, a form to which I am antipathetic when it is taken to extremes; and Miéville is not one for restraint. While Kraken sometimes skirts along the edge of comedy it never fully embraces it. There are too many killings and acts of violence for comedy to sit comfortably. I might have liked the novel better if it had. Its main fault is that it never manages to settle on which sort of book it is meant to be, straddling various narrative stools such as police procedural, one man against the odds, woman in search of the truth about her vanished lover, etc. Miéville has done what all great science-fiction has done—and great so-called literary fiction, when it gets around to it—provide a nuanced, highly imagined critique of the zeitgeist, dressed up in a crackerjack story.  ""... "Kraken" is, no mistake, a literary work. The hint is in the subtitle, "An Anatomy," because Miéville is exploring the gap between the prosaic squid and the mythic Kraken, between the mundane ground of everyday life and the sacred. What precisely turns a fish into a god? What is the anatomy of a legend? And how do gods manifest themselves in our world? ...Miéville's best work since "Perdido Street Station." Kuuluu näihin kustantajien sarjoihinBastei Lübbe Fantasy (20560)
Being chased by cults, a maniac, and the sorcerers of the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit, cephalopod specialist Billy Harrow inadvertently learns that he holds the key to finding a missing squid--a squid that just happens to be an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be. No library descriptions found. |
 Google Books — Ladataan...Suosituimmat kansikuvatArvio (tähdet)Keskiarvo: (3.6)
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The novel starts out seemingly grounded in reality, with Billy Harrow, a curator and specialist in cataloguing and preservation, giving a tour at the Natural History Museum in London. The highlight of the tour is a giant squid, which Billy worked on during the preservation process. However, on this particular day, when Billy opens the door to the room, it is gone. “It couldn’t have, not disappeared, so many metres of abyss meat could not have gone. There were no suspicious cranes. There were no giant tank-nor squid-shaped holes cartoon style in the wall. It could not have gone, but there it was, not.” Billy soon becomes acquainted with several members of a special investigative team, and within sixty pages, is violently introduced to two of the strangest and most horrifying characters, oddly named Goss and Subby. Ancient Egyptian spirits, animal familiars, a malevolent tattooed figure, and an obsessive Star Trek fan also join the cast.
In many ways, this novel reminds me of a mashup of Charles de Lint and Stephen King, with the fantastical urban setting and the corruption of humans fueling the plot. While it certainly wasn’t what I thought it was, and not something which I would read for pleasure, I can see its appeal. At just over six hundred pages, it is not a quick read, although the pace is fast if you can keep up with the many many names and characters which pass through. (