Pan Kraken

Maravilloso. Mi favorito de este escritor junto con The City and The City. Tiene muchísimo en común con Neverwhere de Neil Gaiman. Totalmente disfrutable.

Definitv lesewürdig, paar Sachen waren meiner meinung nach etwas vorhersehbar. Tut dem Buch im ganzen jedoch keinen Abbruch. Kleiner Hinweis vielleicht noch- das ganze ist _kein_ Horror im Stil von H.P. Lovecraft.

Perdido Street Station und The Scar sind zwei der besten Fantasy-Romane, die ich kenne, aber Kraken ist leider ziemlich enttäuschend. Der Stoff (Glauben, Religionen) ist interessant, die verspielte Sprache geht weit über das Niveau anderer Fantasy-Autoren hinaus, und surreale Ideen gibt es in Hülle und Fülle, aber ansonsten ist der Roman ziemlich misslungen. Das geht mit den Charakteren los: es sind alles Pappkameraden, die mich trotz anfänglicher Sympathie bis zum Schluss nicht wirklich interessiert haben. Atmosphärisch, stilistisch wusste der Autor offenbar nicht, wo er hin wollte: Comic Fantasy, Satire, Horror, Krimi? Für mich ist die Mischung jedenfalls nicht stimmig. Dann die Handlung: laaangweilig. Der inky mess-Rezensent hat völlig Recht. 100 Seiten weniger wären mehr gewesen. Statt apokalyptischer Atmosphäre und Spannung nur Endzeit-Geraune und endlose Variationen des immer gleichen. Irgendwann denkt man nur noch: Ja doch, ich hab's kapiert. Ein paar Ideen hätte sich Mieville mal lieber für 'ne Short Story aufgehoben. Selten habe ich bei einem Buch so oft überlegt, ob ich die Lektüre abbrechen soll. 3 Punkte gibt es von mir für die Sprache und die Ideen. In den besten Momenten hat mich der Roman an Jeff Noon erinnert, der ja leider schon lange nichts Neues produziert hat und dessen Falling out of cars auch eher schwach war.

You have to hand it to the author China Miéville (CM), that he does have an incredible grip on the english language, powerful imagination, is capable of wielding it both like a darting rapier or a smashing maul and having the guts to actually write his stories in his own way, whatever an editor might tell him.His very own way... which, while it worked brilliantly in "Perdido Station" and "Iron Council", is utterly the wrong way here. "Kraken" takes place, or at least starts off in the "real" London.... not some utterly fantastic imaginary setting. And while the story quickly blurs the line into the fantastic, London is still a place we feel and somehow expect to be real, run along recognisable lines, even if these have utterly oddball explanations. If every second inhabitant is gifted with knacks or powers, there have to be either limiting rules or some overall explantion the rest of us mundane folks don't notice.Well ..no such luck here and a first strike against cohesive world-building. Within a few chapters CM pulls one fantastic, fiendishly creative and often outlandisch concept out of the proverbial hat, proudly parades it by us (and straight down the roads of hapless London) and then promptly forgets about it, having it fade away like fog at noon. The intense density of ideas is just staggering and unfortunately starts to drown out the story (rather compact at 480 pages length anyway) of the Kraken specimen "too large to be stolen" in a static blast of creativity within a few chapters. Londonmancers, odd end-of-days cults, occultist criminals, semi-mystical gangs, weird knacks of a thousand different heritages and mystical archeological remnants all vie for the readers attention, the language growing more and more convoluted - I suspect CM is secretly in love with a monstrous theusaurus, striving to ressurect terminology not heard for decades or ouside eclectic circles, to which he adds dozens or even hundreds specimen of freshly minted terminology like hinterLondon (sic!) monsterherds, deadists, Thanaturges and postlapsarian... I kid you not - all these terms are from just two pages, picked at random out of the book !"The last krakenbit hid their teuthic tumorous amendations in the lorry".... (sic!) .... yeahhhh right ! Please, dear reader, get used to phrases like this, because they lurk everywhere and creep up on the reader sometimes alone or in small packs, often leaving entire passages alone only to mug the unsuspcting reader when he turns a page.Now add to that prose constant rapid change of viewpoint, numerous cast, supernatural warping of reality's basic tenets, a complicated background and setting where alliances shift from page to page, little being what it appears to be at first sight and the "end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it" coming in at least three different flavours at once, with a side order of insane insights, cultural quibs and in-joke references !Yes, it is very impressive, but the noise drowns out and buries the story, overwhelms the reader's interest and smothers the work under layers of verbose treacle.All of this in 480 pages ! Lost gods of London, the books feels cramped ! It's like a nigh-bursting armoury of beloved keepsakes, the doors of which the readers inadevertently opens - getting buried, suffocating under the content for his curiosity.To be honest, many of the ideas and concepts are awe inspiring, but the book would rather obviously have profited from more space to elaborate on them - e.g. more pages (!) - or holding some ideas back for another novel. Some more complications, twists and double-blinds and rather less obvious hints at the "last chapter surprise" villains and their goals would have been advisable too, because, at its very core, the plot of "Kraken" is ..... utterly simple and linear, besides being in its essence deeply flawed in its internal reasoning. That core plot, the story arc starting with the disappearing Kraken from the Darwin Collection's grounds comes across as an incompletely conceived skeleton framework upon which all the brilliant ideas are hung, to form some larger-than-life entity. The result though, while entertaining in a dazzling sort of way, remain ultimately unconvincing, incomplete, half-baked... much like some bizarre and pitiable accident of inventiveness. Like Frankenstein's monster it seems conceived and created with the best of intentions, but ultimately a failure, a mimickry of the intended goal and spectacular near-miss. 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.The truly great parts and concepts of "Kraken" dearly make me want to love the book, but sadly anger and regret over the unfullfilled promises, the rushed execution and lack of polish prevents that from happening. Guess that makes me heartbroken and disenchanted^^3/5, most of these for inventive geniusBesides, at times I got the distinct suspicion that CM has read "Neverwhere" by Neill Gaiman, and fell in love with that grand idea of a supernatural London (as well as some concepts from Gaiman's "American Gods" which I felt strangely reminded of as well ) sketched there by one of the genres masters. Fell in love so hard and unforgivingly, that he rather shamelessly recreates the imagery, the slightly befuddled protagonist hero-to-be, the supernatural parallel universe(s) just out-of-sight in real London, plunderi... well no, borrowing and reclothing some of the memorable villains from it and turning them into Goss and Subby..... all without acknowledging the creative lease. Adds a slightly sour taste, even if it was meant as an homage,

I know he gets very mixed reviews for a lot of his work, so I've been careful to research other people's opinions on his books. I read Perdido St. Station, and I reckon it was good, but had a few downsides. Kraken, though, is something else. I found it to be a perfect balance of horror and humor. The inventiveness of some of his creations was just so off the wall that this book had me hooked all the way through. I liked most of his characters, even Collingswood, who was somewhat OTT as a policewoman/witch, and poor old Billy, the hapless "hero", was pretty good. I actually felt the horror of the Goss/Subby characters like very few other characters in other horror stories I've read. (Not a direct comparison, but similar in effect to Pennywise and the walking dude in the Stephen King books).On another note, it's easy to compare Kraken to the Ben Aaronovitch "Rivers of London" series, which I read before I found Kraken, but Kraken for me conjured up more of a gritty atmosphere, whereas the RoL series are a bit lighter, though still very good.I guess I'll still have to choose my next Mievlille carefully, but I will certainly be looking for one or more, based on this excellent story.