72 replies to this topic

[Calibandar]

The US edition is due on May 11, the UK edition 4 days earlier. I have not seen a synopsis yet, wilkl post if I find one. I have no idea what the book is about. But Mieville fans might like to know anyway.

[Werthead]

Calibandar, on Sep 12 2009, 13.01, said:

The US edition is due on May 11, the UK edition 4 days earlier. I have not seen a synopsis yet, wilkl post if I find one. I have no idea what the book is about. But Mieville fans might like to know anyway.

Excellent. Kraken and The City and the City were handed in on the same day and Pan thought that City was a stronger work to put out immediately. Hopefully that doesn't mean Kraken is inferior, merely different.

Mieville was saying after City and the City came out that his 'next' book would be a return to Bas-Lag. I think he meant the next book he had to write (i.e. not Kraken).

[Jussi]

Plot synopsis:

Quote

The Natural History Museum's prize exhibit - a giant squid - suddenly disappears. This audacious theft leads Clem, the research scientist who has recently finished preserving the exhibit, into a dark urban underworld of warring cults and surreal magic. It seems that for some, the squid represents a god and should be worshiped as such. Clem gradually comes to realise that someone may be attempting to use the squid to trigger an apocalypse. And so it is now up to him and a renegade squid-worshiper named Dean to find a way of stopping the destruction of the world as they know it whilst themselves surviving the all out-gang warfare that they have unwittingly been drawn into...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kraken-China-Mievi...1264&sr=1-2

[saint777]

Kraken had me at "renegade squid-worshipper".

Edited by saint777, 26 October 2009 - 08:28 AM.

[JamesL]

saint777, on Oct 26 2009, 13.25, said:

Kraken had me at "renegade squid-worshipper".

It had me at 'giant squid'! :D

This blurb sounds great - vintage Mieville. I do hope it is a return to Bas-Lag - the blurb certainly suggests so, though the 'Natural History Museum' referred to could easily be the one in London. Still, I think this has got Bas-Lag written all over it...

Edited by JamesL, 26 October 2009 - 08:51 AM.

[polishgenius]

I reckon if it was a Bas-Lag book the blurb would have said so. It doesn't read much like being one anyway- things like the Kraken being too close to the Avanc in Bas-Lag and that Dean really isn't a Bas-Lag name.

[CryHavoc]

Jussi, on Oct 26 2009, 06.10, said:

Plot synopsis:


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kraken-China-Mievi...1264&sr=1-2

I read that and thought I'd taken a wrong turn into the Vandermeer thread. Still, sounds like fun.

[Werthead]

Based on Mieville's interview at the time of City and the City, when Kraken was already completed, he was talking about a return to Bas-Lag in the future, so I'd say that Kraken is almost definitely not a Bas-Lag novel.

[JamesL]

polishgenius, on Oct 26 2009, 15.14, said:

I reckon if it was a Bas-Lag book the blurb would have said so. It doesn't read much like being one anyway- things like the Kraken being too close to the Avanc in Bas-Lag and that Dean really isn't a Bas-Lag name.

Yeah, I must say both of these thoughts occurred to me after my initial burst of fanboy enthusiasm faded. Dean is so not a Bas-Lag name. I'm guessing now that it's probably set in London, which is clearly a favourite setting of Mieville's. Still, it sounds pretty awesome, so I'm expecting good things...

[Lord Baelish]

It's a shame. I really want to read his next Bas-Lag book. So long as it goes back to the PSS/Scar level of writing and improves on his effort in Iron Council (still haven't managed to finish that book).

[Larry.]

CryHavoc, on Oct 26 2009, 12.19, said:

I read that and thought I'd taken a wrong turn into the Vandermeer thread. Still, sounds like fun.

I thought the same thing! Can't wait to read VanderMeer's comments on it :P

[Jussi]

UK cover art and a new plot synopsis:

Quote

Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears?

For curator Billy Harrow it's the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. It might just be that the creature he's been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it's a god.

A god that someone is hoping will end the world.

http://www.amazon.co...503/ref=ed_oe_h

[polishgenius]

Sounds like 'Clem' has changed into Billy Harrow.

I wonder if Mieville will play it straight or wink at the ridiculousness of that plot in that setting.

[Happy Ent]

Quote

squid-worshipper

PZ Myers is the star of a Mieville novel? This is some kind of nerd vortex.

[Cuchulain]

The cover art looks decent.

[Durckad]

This sounds pretty awesome, tbh.

If there's one thing I love, it's Lovecraftian horrors, bizarre cults, and magic in modern settings. With Mieville's creativity, this sounds like a star to me.

[Gunnlaugr ormstunga]

The idea of Mieville writing an overt (but slightly tongue-in-cheek) Lovecraft homage has made me incredibly happy.

[Jussi]

A blurb from Random House summer 2010 catalog:

Quote

Bestselling author China Miéville returns to his roots in this exciting, no-holds-barred contemporary fantasy.

A book for fans of Miéville's genre-breaking hit Perdido Street Station and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Miéville wrote Kraken for all those fans who have longed for him to return to the breathless energy and unleashed fantastical style that characterized Perdido Street Station, and his evergrowing fanbase will surely be pleased with the result. Set in modern-day London, this contemporary fantasy opens in the British Museum. Everyone is there to see the Kraken, a giant squid measuring more than thirty feet long that washed up dead upon England's shores. But when they arrive in the Great Chamber, horror of horrors, the Kraken is gone! Thus begins a breathless chase leading to an underground London inhabited by strange, magical criminals and mythical cults, all clamoring to get their hands on the Kraken. And in the middle of it all is Billy, the Kraken's young curator, who's desperately trying to figure out what the hell is going on!

http://www.randomhou.../rhpgsum101.pdf

[Calibandar]

And a new, more interesting, synopsis:

With this outrageous new novel, China Miéville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read this—or any other—year. 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.

In the Darwin Centre at London’s Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centre’s prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis dux—better known as the Giant Squid. But Billy’s tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air.

As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizens—human and otherwise—are adept in magic and murder.

There is the Congregation of God Kraken, a sect of squid worshippers whose roots go back to the dawn of humanity—and beyond. There is the criminal mastermind known as the Tattoo, a merciless maniac inked onto the flesh of a hapless victim. There is the FSRC—the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit—a branch of London’s finest that fights sorcery

with sorcery. There is Wati, a spirit from ancient Egypt who leads a ragtag union of magical familiars. There are the Londonmancers, who read the future in the city’s entrails. There is Grisamentum, London’s greatest wizard, whose shadow lingers long after his death. And then there is Goss and Subby, an ageless old man and a cretinous boy who, together, constitute a terrifying—yet darkly charismatic—demonic duo.

All of them—and others—are in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be.

[Curethan]

Awesomeness.