Kraken, China Mieville

The new weird, the new crossover of fantasy and horror, something that has actually been around for a while; you just have to think of X-Files and you get the picture. Kraken is part of that weird; it has some very horrific moments with the notable Goss and Subby. And some very fantastical with the use of knacks (powers) used by the characters, that require certain habits in order for them to be used, thank you Collingswood. It is a book immersed in its location, London, and feels as though this could be real. This is due to the main character, Billy, and how Mieville writes him and the people surrounding him. Often times, and Mieville plays with this, you got your average Joe a person with nothing special that in the story actually has some sort of special juice. But that’s just it, Billy doesn’t really have anything special about him other than that he knows a lot about mollusks. That’s what makes the story feel real, is that you do have an everyday character who gets thrown into something horrible, due to a series of misunderstandings. But because of these misunderstandings and what people believe of Billy, he actually becomes quite powerful in that, because he understands that to destroy his enemy he has to destroy belief. Belief is what made Billy special, even if it was a misunderstanding, like Brian in The Life of Brian. Belief is what makes a person powerful or special. That’s something that really impressed me with Mieville, is that I didn’t feel distant from the character or out of touch. We all can achieve something like that. Parents I think can attest to this oddity in someone believing you are so powerful and special. That what was impossible is possible because it’s for them, it is for yourself.

Mieville took the typical character that goes from zero to hero and he made him one of us. He made him something humanly achievable in a magical and real world. That is what I think the new weird and novels like Kraken are all about, the combination of genres tends to pull out more about humanity and how life really is. Life isn’t just fantastical, scary, strange, serious, plain, and adventurous. It’s a combination of these things, life is weird and strange and can have moments where you get pulled into a hail of a storm because a giant squid disappears and you’re know your shit about mollusks, and everyone once a piece of what you got.