Shocking Iconoclasm

[volterator]

Have to say, am not really caring for the new Miéville novel, Kraken. It is not, ahaha, crackin'.

Comments

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I think it may be my favourite, at least of the novels. What aren't you liking?

[vertigoranger.livejournal.com]

I am ungripped, and this is quite strange, since I myself am a cultist and of Miéville specifically. I feel like I've seen it before, y'know? Perdido Street Station has huge personal importance and The Scar is perhaps my favourite novel. I read both King Rat and The City & The City in a weekend each (might have read King Rat in a day, I forget) but I'm still sub-two hundred pages in on this in a week and a half of reading. I was propelled forward at the start but now less so.

Up front - his characters feel well drawn, despite what I'd call his developing reluctance to narrate their psyches; consider Borlu from TC&tC, whose thoughts I think we almost never hear - I'm getting the same feeling here but without the narrative thrust that that book had, but Billy feels like a cipher in a miasmic plot and the prose itself is not carrying the weight, and I'm the last person to complain about hard work when it comes to prose, usually.

It could be the tropes, I've seen the fantastic labour unions, improbably tall libraries, eldtrich geometries, working class wizards and esoteric academics before; supernatural cops are one of the hoariest gags ever. The under-London genre was never a favourite - I never finished Neverwhere either, and Goss is coming through more Frank Gallagher than I want. I think that he's not pitching the humour broad enough even - when you're a New Weird author facing a reader with a very high baseline for novelty, one species of zaniness doesn't really stand out as being funnier than any other - gimme a straight up punchline.

I dunno - the avanc from The Scar was a god, the squid is just another boring conversation about religion. But! I love China Miéville's work with an abiding passion, and have every faith that come the end, this book is going to work.

Oh, and I enjoyed Collingswood's behavior in the police interview scene right near the start - shit was Lynchian.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I think the blankness of Billy is deliberate - he's the audience identification figure, and they can often be a bit dull (cf many Doctor Who companions, or Richard in Neverwhere - and if I will concede a fault in Kraken it's that the Neverwhere influence is so heavy Gaiman should at least have had a thank you.

Collingswood is indeed a star, though.

[vertigoranger.livejournal.com]

I'm going to get stuck in on the book later, come what may. My natural hype muscle must have gotten flabby - I think part of the problem is that for this book I've not heard the obligatory Agony Column public radio interview that China does with Rick Kleffel in San Fransisco - always enjoy them and seem to be among the few audio interviews that Miéville gives (also it introduced me to Charles Stross's work, which I like a lot).

Speaking of blankness in Doctor Who, young Rory is practically robotic. Not a tour de force of naturalistic acting, but the episode they have set up for the weekend looks like a blinder already. Or just really weird. Either would be good.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I watched it again this morning and if anything I loved the interplay with Rory even more second time around.

I think I've also heard Mieville do audio interviews with Bat Segundo, which may cover similar turf but are worth digging out. And I forget where, but there was also an excellent audio of Stross talking to Nobel economist Paul Krugman doing the rounds.

[vertigoranger.livejournal.com]

I got this slightly wrong: I meant to say that so far the characters feel believable but that Billy is not well-developed. I buy the characters, but I don't inhabit them, at this stage. The lack of being in their heads I think is deliberate, and I suspect it's a political aesthetic thing - China trying to avoid writing feelings porn/psychoanalytic literary guff (for which we can all be grateful). I feel there's more Cormack McCarthy in the man than most writers, and certainly the middle 150 pages of Iron Council bears that out.