KRAKEN

WELL, WHAT A WILD RIDE THIS WAS!

This remarkable novel, penned by China Mieville and published by Del Rey in 2011, ISBN 978-0345497505, is probably one of a kind in the vast and spreading genre called Urban Fantasy.  Why?  It concerns itself with Squid worship, that's why.   For that reason alone, ladies, you need to read this.

CLIFFIE'S NOTES ON THIS NOVEL, WHICH REALLY NEEDS TO BE A MOVIE SOMEDAY:

>> From start to finish, nobody in this story shows ANYTHING BUT RESPECT for Architeuthis dux  -- as the Naked Apes call them.  There is a whole religion in here, called the Church of God Kraken, that treats our ammoniac sisters as the central deity in a pantheon of TENTACLED SAINTS.  I think that is a pretty reasonable way of seeing what the Shaved Monkeys have been making that species put up with lately.

>> The world described in this story is populated with every kind of magician, paranormal entity, and uncanny practice.  The author leaves you with the distinct sense that the story in here BARELY SCRATCHES THE SURFACE of the weirdness going on in London.  It takes you back to the GOOD OLD DAYS when everyone in human "civilization" had their little local array of deities, and everyone pretty much respected everyone else's.

>> London is indeed the setting.  This is one of the drawbacks; from first page to last, the language is incredibly dense with every kind of East End wisecrack, not excluding Cockney rhyming slang ("Can you Adam and Eve it?").  This makes it pretty difficult to follow -- as a native speaker of Midwestern English I had to pull on my hip-waders to get through some of this, and it meant going back to re-read again and again,  BUT IT ALL FINALLY MAKES SENSE.  Americans and Brits are truly two peoples separated by a common language.

>> The climax and denouement are disappointingly MONKEYCENTRIC.  But what did you really expect from a human author?

Honestly, ladies, you'll LOVE this one; I wore out several personal assistants turning the pages for me as I writhed, enthralled, behind the glass wall of my tank.