China Mieville - Kraken

Kraken is a fantasy novel by British author China Miéville. It is published in the UK by Macmillan, and in the US by Del Rey Books. The book bears the subtitle "An Anatomy" on the title page. It was the winner for the 2011 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

Miéville has described the book as "a dark comedy about a squid-worshipping cult and the end of the world. It takes the idea of the squid cult very seriously. Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they’re not absurd.



Plot

An inexplicable event has occurred at the British Museum of Natural History — a forty foot specimen of giant squid in formalin has disappeared overnight. Additionally, a murder victim is found folded into a glass bottle. Various groups are interested in getting the squid back, including a naive staff member, a secret squad of London police, assorted religious cults, and various supernatural and mostly dead criminal elements. The wondrous squid represents deity to the Church of Kraken Almighty. Did they liberate their god, or could it have been stolen by a rival cult? The only thing that all agree upon is that the fate of this embalmed kraken is intimately tied to the End of the World.