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1[[quoteright:230:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/arizakraken.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:230:The truth is down there.]]
3''Kraken: Atrapados en el abismo'' is a 2005 thriller novel by Spanish author Luis Miguel Ariza. It was his second work after ''La Sombra del Chamán''.
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5NASA microbiologist and troubled single mother Nora Pulaski is about to fulfill her dream: to be part of the scientific staff of the ''Mars Eternity'', a probe being sent to Mars to pierce through its surface. However, weeks before the launch of the ship, she is suddenly removed from the project with no explanation. Pulaski finds out this decision is related to her disappeared uncle, legendary Mars expert Robert Pulaski, who also left the NASA in shady circumstances.
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7At the same time, Spanish sea ecologist Juan Cepesma struggles in a legal battle against petrol corporation Texon, whose sinister chairman Calvin Steiffel is bent on performing tests on the Cantabrian Sea. Cepesma is then approached by eccentric American scientist Alastair Golombek, who ''must'' find proofs of the existence of a giant squid species greater than the famous ''Architeuthis''.
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9Soon, the two stories tangle with each other, and Pulaski, Cepesma and their allies will find themselves working under pressure... very literally speaking.
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11Not to be confused with the 2010 novel ''Literature/{{Kraken}}''.
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13!!This work contains examples of:
14* AbortedArc: The mysterious men who stole the Richardson report and tried to kidnap Nora and Nadie are later revealed to work for Arkos Siffnet, a rival corporation, but the latter never appears again in the novel.
15* AffablyEvil: Chakenko. Although he is impeccably polite and friendly, he is in the loop with Steiffel's plans and actually once thinks on getting his hands on the teenaged Nadia to use her as a prostitute.
16* AmbiguousSituation:
17** Are the squids acting on their own, or is the magnetic HatePlague also affecting them?
18** At the end of the story, who sabotaged the Mars drill and why are still LeftHanging, with only a vague set of implications. [[spoiler:Was it Robert, in order to avoid more contamination? Chakenko, in order to get Nora kicked out and have something to negotiatie with her? Nora's petty new boss at the NASA, in order to have her sent away due to his suspicions of her Soviet past?]]
19* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Golombek recalls the 1941 ''Britannia'' raft incident, a supposedly documented incident of a huge squid killing a man in real life, where a sailor in a raft was dragged into the abyss by a 23 ft long squid, later tried to do the same with another man from the raft before being fought off. However, he mixes it up with another, unrelated folkloric tale about a group of survivors in a raft that were killed all but one by a giant squid (which might have even arisen as an embellished version of the ''Britannia'' attack itself).
20* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Chakenko delivers one to Nora.
21-->I know very few people who can boast of having left their past behind. Are you one of them, Dr. Pulaski?
22* BigBad: Calvin Steiffel, CEO of Texon.
23* BigDamnHeroes: The ''Madre 5'' ROV comes in time to save the ''Atlantis'' from the squids, which swim away in fear of it. (Why they later return to attack the ''Beebe'', which is much greater in size than ''Madre 5'', is another question.)
24* BittersweetEnding: Edging the DownerEnding all the way. [[spoiler:Golombek and Albee are dead and their work was AllForNothing, with only pieces of it reaching the Smithsonian; Robert also dies without reconciling with Nora, and the latter doesn't get back her place in the ''Mars Eternity'' mission; and the powerful Steiffel is still hoping to claim his dangerous booty.]] The positive side is that at least [[spoiler:Nora, Nadie and Cepesma are alive and with some money, and Luarca is left free from local oil spills.]]
25* GiantSquid: Of course. The book features scientists searching for the legendary giant squid, and they go to find a species much more intelligent and dangerous than they had expected.
26* HatePlague: [[spoiler:Nora discovers the magnetite mixed with the oil esentially drives people nuts, explaining the situation in the ''Merlin'' and Morales' erratic personality.]]
27* ItCanThink: The squids perform coordinated baiting and harassing behavior, have their own language, and it is later shown that they can recognize communicative intelligence in other lifeforms.
28* LargeAndInCharge: Steiffel, who is the chairman of Texon and a big guy. Also counts as EvilIsBigger.
29* MegaCorp: Texon, described in the text as the biggest private oil company in the world.
30* NoOSHACompliance: The management of the ''Ocean Shuttle'' is nothing short of disastrous and ends up contributing to the failure of the mission. Not only they prioritized other stuff over installing an independent breathing system, thus making the shuttle dangerously dependent of the ''Merlin'' above, but also left the SAM ADS explicitly unable to be used to escape.
31* ShoutOut:
32** "Cepesma" is not a real Spanish surname, but the name of a real life sea ecologist organization based on Cantabria. The character of Juan Cepesma is partially based on its director Luis Laria, also known for being an occasional guest in the science section of ''Series/CuartoMilenio''.
33** One of the dead submariners is an Italian named Torcelli. In real life, the ''Torricelli'' (later known as ''General Sanjurjo'') was a submarine during the UsefulNotes/SpanishCivilWar.
34* SuperPersistentPredator: Played with. The best way to describe the squids' behavior is that they act according to what the script needs every time: they attack subs and divers apparently at random, sometimes to doggedly try to destroy them, sometimes only to withdraw in fear of smaller threats or for no apparent reason at all (and the explanation given, that they are attracted by oil, doesn't clearly jive with this).

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