Kraken - China Miéville
Mar. 15th, 2019 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxIf asked what type of stories I was particularly inclined to, my automatic answer would not actually be “people with super/magical powers trying to stop an apocalypse, ft. time travel and/or timeline shenanigans,” but considering my main media consumption this month has been 1. Umbrella Academy (TV show + comics), 2. rereading Homestuck, and 3. Kraken by China Miéville, I think I may have to admit I definitely have a Type. The heart wants what the heart wants, I guess?
In a modern-day London where the magical and the mundane live side by side, a city carved up by turf wars between competing apocalyptic cults and magic criminal gangs, a god goes missing. This god – and there are many of them – is a giant squid, preserved and on display at a museum. Billy, the museum employee who helped preserve the squid and first discovered its theft, finds himself an unwilling prophet of the squid cult, and is drawn into a plan to get it back.
The story’s sprawling cast and tangle of plot threads and complicated, fragile alliances include a police force dedicated to magical cults, a squid cult devotee, the spirit of an Egyptian burial statue who now spends his time as a labor organizer for the city’s familiars and magical assistants, dueling crime lords – who happen to be a sadistic sentient tattoo and supposedly dead, respectively – and a mundane young woman who, like a modern-day Janet in Tam Lin, pulls on a pair of sensible boots and marches straight into a world of dangerous magic in search of her missing boyfriend.
One of the things that makes or breaks a fantasy novel, for me, is the way magic works in the world it’s set in. There has to be some mechanics, some consequences, some reason you can’t just snap your fingers and solve all of your problems, because in that case, why does anyone have any problems at all? This novel portrays magic as a combination of something innate and something learned, and it certainly doesn’t skimp on the consequences. For example:
One secondary character in the novel was a ‘knacker’ (magic user) whose specialty was teleportation— but teleportation isn’t just a ‘snap your fingers and think really hard’ deal; it’s a process that rips the teleport-ee apart on the cellular level and then reassembles those cells somewhere else, which even in a world of magic the human body was not built to do, so the process actually kills them and the “them” that appears at the target coordinates is actually an identical copy. The guy in question was haunted by dozens upon dozens of his own ghosts. :O :O
(On that note— there was quite a bit of body horror in this. Personally, I get less squicked out by words than by visuals, so I think there was only one description where I was like oh absolutely the f*ck not and skimmed ahead, but take that into consideration if you’re considering this for your to-read list.)
Miéville does a really good job of weaving fantasy into the modern world, especially in how magic interacts with technology (magic-based computer programs, like ‘hexware’ and ‘iScry’! a possessed iPod that has opinions on the music it plays! factory robots exposed to magic count as eligible to join the Union of Magical Assistants!) but every time he references social media or pop culture it’s an emotional one-punch knock-out. Like, I’m reading a book about squid gods and magic and cults and the apocalypse, being pulled into this really weird cool magical world, and then someone drops “lolcats” or “google-fu” into conversation and I feel like a rug was unexpectedly yanked out from under my feet. Not necessarily because it doesn’t make sense in context – it does, the context being 2010 – but because I was not and will never be emotionally prepared to read the words ‘I can haz squid back?’
(There was a whole paragraph about how young pop-culture-nerd ‘knackers’ did stuff like “[make] untraditional wands, disdaining willow for carefully lathed metal and calling them sonic screwdrivers,” which was like not just having the carpet yanked from under me but bonking my head on the stairs the whole way down.)
In a modern-day London where the magical and the mundane live side by side, a city carved up by turf wars between competing apocalyptic cults and magic criminal gangs, a god goes missing. This god – and there are many of them – is a giant squid, preserved and on display at a museum. Billy, the museum employee who helped preserve the squid and first discovered its theft, finds himself an unwilling prophet of the squid cult, and is drawn into a plan to get it back.
The story’s sprawling cast and tangle of plot threads and complicated, fragile alliances include a police force dedicated to magical cults, a squid cult devotee, the spirit of an Egyptian burial statue who now spends his time as a labor organizer for the city’s familiars and magical assistants, dueling crime lords – who happen to be a sadistic sentient tattoo and supposedly dead, respectively – and a mundane young woman who, like a modern-day Janet in Tam Lin, pulls on a pair of sensible boots and marches straight into a world of dangerous magic in search of her missing boyfriend.
One of the things that makes or breaks a fantasy novel, for me, is the way magic works in the world it’s set in. There has to be some mechanics, some consequences, some reason you can’t just snap your fingers and solve all of your problems, because in that case, why does anyone have any problems at all? This novel portrays magic as a combination of something innate and something learned, and it certainly doesn’t skimp on the consequences. For example:
One secondary character in the novel was a ‘knacker’ (magic user) whose specialty was teleportation— but teleportation isn’t just a ‘snap your fingers and think really hard’ deal; it’s a process that rips the teleport-ee apart on the cellular level and then reassembles those cells somewhere else, which even in a world of magic the human body was not built to do, so the process actually kills them and the “them” that appears at the target coordinates is actually an identical copy. The guy in question was haunted by dozens upon dozens of his own ghosts. :O :O
(On that note— there was quite a bit of body horror in this. Personally, I get less squicked out by words than by visuals, so I think there was only one description where I was like oh absolutely the f*ck not and skimmed ahead, but take that into consideration if you’re considering this for your to-read list.)
Miéville does a really good job of weaving fantasy into the modern world, especially in how magic interacts with technology (magic-based computer programs, like ‘hexware’ and ‘iScry’! a possessed iPod that has opinions on the music it plays! factory robots exposed to magic count as eligible to join the Union of Magical Assistants!) but every time he references social media or pop culture it’s an emotional one-punch knock-out. Like, I’m reading a book about squid gods and magic and cults and the apocalypse, being pulled into this really weird cool magical world, and then someone drops “lolcats” or “google-fu” into conversation and I feel like a rug was unexpectedly yanked out from under my feet. Not necessarily because it doesn’t make sense in context – it does, the context being 2010 – but because I was not and will never be emotionally prepared to read the words ‘I can haz squid back?’
(There was a whole paragraph about how young pop-culture-nerd ‘knackers’ did stuff like “[make] untraditional wands, disdaining willow for carefully lathed metal and calling them sonic screwdrivers,” which was like not just having the carpet yanked from under me but bonking my head on the stairs the whole way down.)
no subject
Date: 2019-03-15 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-15 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-15 03:27 pm (UTC)Oh boy, me neither. This still sounds like an interesting book, though--I love a good magic system with some actually horrifying implications.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-15 03:40 pm (UTC)I would definitely recommend this one, then! It's got some really creative ideas about the mechanics of magic in this 'verse, and
even with the second-hand embarrassment of dated memesI really enjoyed the book as a whole.no subject
Date: 2019-03-15 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-16 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-16 04:35 am (UTC)