Kraken

Kraken by China Miéville (Del Ray, 2010) Billy Harrow is taking people on a tour at London’s Natural History Museum when he makes an impossible discovery: the enormous specimen of Architeuthis dux, the museum’s carefully preserved giant squid, is gone, tank and all. Things are about to get even weirder: he is interrogated by some very odd cops, attacked by a man without a heart, rescued by a disciple of a religion that believes Architeuthis is its god, finds himself in conversation with a statue in London, and soon learns that London itself is alive and full of viscera and leucocytes and more. The plotting is bonkers, with more twists and turns and magical intercessions than I could keep track of. But the language cracks delightfully, and there’s enough irreverence for all the gods and then some. As the story builds towards not one but two apocalypses you realize that the end of the world is always just about to happen—and always, there is someone egging it on and someone trying to…