Mieville has written some totally awesome books (Perdido Street Station, Iron Council), some decent ones (Un Lun Dun) and some not so great ones (Looking for Jake And Other Stories).

Kraken, unfortunately, belongs somewhere towards the bottom of the second group. It isn’t bad, but it’s nowhere near great, either.

A giant squid mysteriously disappears from a museum. Mysteriously, because it disappears together with its equally giant exhibition tank, larger than any door or window or other opening in the room. This disappearance somehow seems to precipitate the end of the world, according to the prophets of various cults, who are in unusual agreement with each other. Billy Harrow, the curator in charge of the squid exhibit, gets tangled up in various efforts to affect this outcome (either to prevent or to hasten it on its way).

This is not the London of the Tube, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus etc. This is a London where weird magic is normal; where the action takes place in abandoned factories, rooftops, church basements and dirty alleyways. As one reviewer at SF Site puts it, “it’s Neverwhere on a bad acid trip”.

There is a lot of energy, ambition and imagination in this book. It would be hard to top the sheer weirdness of Mieville. There are strange cults, weird magic, seriously disturbing villains, including one bad guy who is a tattoo on someone else’s back. Also, somewhat unexpectedly, this book is really funny, though it’s as dark as his other books.

But frankly, after a while, I found the book tedious. For a very long time, Billy and/or his friends are threatened/chased/attacked by various people; they then come up with an idea about who might be behind all this, locate this person, and conclude that no, that wasn’t it, s/he is just seizing an opportunity caused by someone else; loop back to the beginning again. And unfortunately the ending was a damp squib, as I’ve already come to expect of Mieville’s books.

There were too many pages to say not very much. I found myself skimming parts of it. Had it not been written by Mieville, I might have given up halfway through. And when everything and everybody is weird (including, it turns out, poor Billy Harrow himself – he’s not just a bystander caught up in the mess) then after a while I become numb to the weirdness and let it wash over me. Weirdness number 86 no longer feels particularly exciting.

I guess Kraken would be easier to enjoy if you just approached it as a demented geeky/magicky comedy and ignored the weakish storytelling. Because the dialogue is funny, the weirdness is endless, and the level of grotesque detail incredible.

Amazon UK, Amazon US, Adlibris.