Kraken is a novel arising from the twisted brainpan of China Miéville, author of Perdido Street Station and itssequels. It tells the story of Billy Harrow, a curator for the Natural History Museum whose work touring guests around one day is rudely interrupted by the inexplicable disappearance of the museum's preserved giant squid. From there, Billy's day only gets worse as he is drawn into a shadowy London underworld of competing doomsday cults, living tattoos, socialist familiars, and Chaos Nazis.Oh, and the squid? Turns out that half the city is thinking of using it to end the world. Too bad they can't agree onhow...
Tropes:
All Myths Are True: takes a slightly postmodern or popcultural approach to this idea, but it's definitely there in the work.
Animated Tattoo: The Tattoo is just that—a tattoo. He's also a mob boss.
Our Angels Are Different: The 'angels of memory', guardians and embodiments of museums and other places of knowledge.
Author Appeal: Mieville is back to writing in London, and it's clear that he's loving every minute of it.
Badass: Whilst a good number of characters havetheirmoments, Dane is probably the most consistent example.
Barrier Warrior: Billy, once he realises exactly what sort of 'saint' he is.
Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Belief has a very significant impact on the world. The Architeuthis has power because it represents the kraken-gods. When Grisamentum is trying to use its ink to rewrite the world, Billy manages to redefine the Architeuthis as being just a specimen, devoid of any link to a higher power.
Cluster F-Bomb: Collingswood can't open her mouth without uttering half a dozen profanities.
Cool and Unusual Punishment: Billy tortured a little thimble of ink who really is a part of Grisamentum by using bleach. Then Paul pissed on it.
Dark Is Not Evil: The apocalyptic, Lovecraftian cult of kraken-worshippers are actually pretty nice folks, by the standards of this book's Black and Grey Morality.
The End of the World as We Know It: A recurrent theme. London's supernatural community runs betting pools and street parties in honour of various cults' prophesied apocalypses.
Green Lantern Ring: Magic-users in the setting have 'knacks', fields of expertise like teleportation, surveillance, and so on that their powers are based around. More generalised knacks give you more versatile powers... and then there's Goss, with the knack of 'being an evil bastard'. Needless to say, he puts it to very good use.
Meaningful Name: Grisamentum translates roughly into "grey ink", with the same root words as 'atramentum', or black ink; he wrote his messages in grey-colored text after all
Reality Warper: "Knacking" is a sort of reality warping that works based on symbolism, sympathetic linkages, and belief. A phaser prop that was used on Star Trek can be knacked so that it actually fires, a key that was embedded in pavement can "unlock the street", and so forth.
Soul Jar: Wati has no corporeal form of his own, and instead freely moves his being in and out of any statue, doll, or figurine within reach, provided it's three dimensional and sculpted to look like something living.
Subby is nothing more than a convenient carrying case for Goss's heart.
Talkative Loon: Goss, who is almost unintelligible most of the time. Only serves to make him creepier.
Tattooed Crook: A bizarre inversion. The crook is the tattoo.
Marge. Not that she does a whole lot, but she does it alone (without a Dane).
Paul, once he decided to stop being just the guy with the Tattoo.
Twinmaker: Simon's teleportation spell really goes into the Fridge Horror of Star Trek's transporters. Suffice it to say that it's even worse in a world where ghosts exist.
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