Kraken – China Mieville

I have to admit that I am unable to spell Mieville’s name without googling the correct spelling first. Why his name couldn’t be Andrew Andrews or something, I don’t know. So Mieville is actually a pretty…respected?…author. His books are everywhere, he’s the new Neil Gaiman+Michael Chabon etc etc. They are, in fact, so abundant in bookstores that somehow Seth and I have managed to collect four of his books over the past year. Not a big deal right? Except we’ve never read a single one of them. Until now.

I did attempt to read The City and The City, and I nearly threw it against the wall in frustration. I kept it away and vowed never again to read Mieville because he gave me a headache and went to read my Sneaky Pie mysteries to calm down. Recently though, I picked up Kraken because 1. the cover kept reminding of sashimi during my vegetarian fast and 2. it sounded too interesting not to read.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiightttttttttt???

And I have to admit that it was worth reading, if only for the details. I went into Kraken expecting it to have a Victorian steampunk setting, what with museums and cults and things, and was a bit disappointed to find that it was set in modern day London. I kept having a slight feeling of disjointedness throughout the book when they mentioned modern day things like lolcats and google and Star Trek; I think that was partly my botched expectations as well as the fact that maybe these things were not inserted as smoothly as they could have been. Or maybe they should not have been mentioned at all. These references can date a good book.

I know, I’m doing it wrong. BUT LOOK GINGER KITTEN ARRGHH. 

Recap: Basically the giant squid goes missing from the museum, tank and all, and there’s a rush to find out who took it because it’s going to cause the apocalypse. There are weird cults, gangsters, BPRD a paranormal police dept, a bunch of seers and miscellaneous supernatural things. Billy Harrow is the museum fellow who put Kraken in his tank and now everyone wants him, for reasons that even after the book I didn’t really understand (so he’s sort of like Kirsten Stewart). We more or less follow him around throughout the book, although there are about 3 million other characters who pop up.

Like this, but with less Bender.

The Good: It was a really interesting book. I kept going because I wanted to see what Mieville was going to come up with next, what creepy power, what disgusting way to die, what magical tracker was going to be used, ‘angels’, ‘demons’, all kinds of amazing things. This book would make an excellent movie. I suggest David Lynch directs it. The world Mieville created is rich and layered. I would be willing to read a guidebook of Kraken’s world, that’s how interesting it is.

Yes, I am embarrassed to admit I have design training. 

The groups Mieville created all have personalities of their own (a good thing, because there are quite a few groups running around in the novel), are propelled by specific motivations and act according to those personalities. So in this sense, the groups he has created are not simply there as page decoration; they act according to their designation. I hate when authors just pull dozens of characters out of their arse, and they’re supposed to belong to one faction or another except they run around and do out-of-character shit because they couldn’t be bothered to discipline the poor character.

The Bad: Two things irked me about this book, but I wouldn’t say that they’re reasons not to read it.

1. The characters. While the characters working in groups have a personality and agency according to their groups, individual characters seem to suffer. I honestly cannot recall much about any single character’s personality (besides maybe Collingswood, but only because he kept pushing her so much. LOOK AT COLLINGSWOOD! SHE’S SO GODDAMN AWESOME AND BADASS! BUT SHE STILL DOESN’T TUCK HER SHIRT IN COZ SHE’S WORKING CLASS AND SHIT). They were mostly defined by their group motivations rather any memorable individual quirk. Except maybe that security guard guy. He was okay.

What Collingswood wants to be when she grows up. 

2. The ending. I do not know or understand what happened at the end. I can’t understand why or how it ended like that, or even why and how the culprit was who he was. Which is why I think it’d make a good Lynch movie. But it’s also why this book was not as fulfilling to me as it should be, given the attention to detail and overall good writing.

The Ugly: Marge, the girlfriend of Billy’s dead friend, Leo. She insists on investigating Leo’s death. Everytime I got to one of the chapters with her in it, I told myself, AHA this must be where Mieville will insert plot device to show that she is indeed important to the story! But no. She really is just pointless. I have no idea why he dragged out her story. I am upset with Mieville because of this. I would like an explanation from him.

Yes, Marge. Yes you can. *pat pat*.

Verdict: An interesting book with interesting ideas. Maybe a bit too many ideas to the detriment of character building? I enjoyed the book though.

Pratchett the kitten

I was checking out photos of ginger cats on the internet. I love ginger cats. 

Me: OHMYGOD! LOOK AT THAT CAT! HE’S SOO HANDSOME! LOOK AT THAT HANDSOME ORANGE TOM! GRRR! I NEED TO TAKE HIM HOME! SO CUTE!

Anushia: Does Pratchett know you’re cheating on him?

Me: …

NO ONE IS CUTER THAN PRATCHETT!!!

 

The Horns of Ruin – Tim Akers

I’ve been meaning to post a review of this book for so long I can barely remember what the plot is. Not that there was much plot to begin with. Let’s recap before getting to the gnawing of bone and gnashing of teeth. SPOILERS.

Recap: The scrumptiously named Eva Forge is a Paladin of Morgan, the God of War. Morgan is a dead god. He was thought to be murdered by his brother Amon, also dead. The setting city of Ash was built by Amon, the Scholar, but is now ruled by the third brother, Alexander (who gets to be god of everything seeing as he didn’t die). Morgan is a dying cult, so when its members start being targeted for death by mysterious and powerful forces, it is up to Forge to figure out what is going on before the cult disappears forever. She and her trusty articulated sheath. And her angriness. Forge is always angry. It’s like reading about yourself if you lived in a steampunk era with living gods and guns and curses and had neverending PMS.

Yeah whatever.

Forge discovers a nasty secret (with the help of a seer and a cop with a welsh name) that could tear Ash apart. Which it more or less does at the end.

The Good: Wellll. The cover artwork for the Pyr edition I have is pretty nice.

Not bad right? Except I don’t imagine her like this at all. 

The idea of Ash is interesting – a steampunk city that runs on what I imagine is some sort of eldritch magic. The unification of science (steampunk) and fantasy (spellcasting etc) is consistently evident throughout the book. Warriors use spells but also carry swords and guns.

The Cult of Amon was by far the most interesting aspect in the, but little was explained of it  – how it works, the story behind the scholar turned betrayer, the shunned librarians with their shackled superpowers deserved more page-time in comparison to the less than charming Eva Mary Sue.

The Bad: Quiet a few. This book was not a good one, but I’ll narrow it down to a couple of things that irked me the most.

1. Eva Forge. She started out promising, and then turned into a whiny-assed anger management candidate. She’s supposed to be really badass and take-charge, but the way she’s written is like a petulant superpowered adolescent. IT’S MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY. DISAGREE AND YOU’RE WRONG. I’M ALWAYS RIGHT. Which leads us to the inherent issue I have with this lady. Mary Sue-ness.

That’s right you irritating, self-righteous, un-mystiqueal cow. 

See, I’m pretty sure the book implies that with the Gods fallen at the end, and the existence of nascent gods among the populace has been brought to light, Forge is herself a God – perhaps the most powerful at the time (I think I finished my comma quota with that sentence). Now. Nowwwwwww. She strikes me as a Mary Sue mainly because even when she’s wrong, she’s clearly always right. But even though she’s rude, whiny, abrasive and likes to waste time indulging her anger, people thinks she’s awesome. Even when she’s intimidating people to do what she wants, or wasting precious time telling everyone all the hardship she’s been through, or being unnecessarily angry, she’s still always in the right. Overbearing righteousness and a tendency to lay on the self-sacrifice orchestra – she reminded me a lot of Anita Blake and her everyone-sucks-except-me attitude.

2. The Plot. I did not really understand it. Partly because I was rushing to the end of the book. There was a lot of pointless meandering as I recall, and I didn’t know why Eva did this or that half the time. As far as I know, the plot is Eva Forge Kills Everything.

Like this, but lacking awesomeness, summer glau and basically every attractive element. 

3. World Building. The problem I had reading this book is that the ideas were there, but they are never fully realised. It’s like ideation constipation. It’s frustrating as heck to keep expecting the book to live up to expectations (Amazon seems to love it) and it just keeps not doing that. It’s like, oh follow the interesting plot point…to a fart. Seriously.

The author has the image of this complex world in his mind, but his attempts to convey them to us is confused and one-dimensional. He should take a break and read Greg Keyes’ The Waterborn, a beautiful and awesome work of fantasy that does incredible world-building.

4. Articulated fucking sheath. What. the. hell. is.it?

IS THIS WHAT YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT YOU PRETENTIOUS SWORD-CARRIER?? WHY CAN’T YOU USE A SCABBARD LIKE EVERY OTHER GODDAMN SWORDSPERSON. Ass.

The Ugly: This book reads like a fanfic of a WoW paladin or something. It feels lazily written and lacks a certain maturity that adds weight and results in a good book in genres like steampunk and fantasy. I was surprised to discover that Akers was not a first-time author; this was his second or third book in fact.

The Verdict: Not worth the time. For a more satisfying read, I’d recommend  The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder instead.