Book Preview: Kraken by China Mieville

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Whether he's to your tastes or your favourite fiction is more prosaic fare, there can be little doubt that few such fertile imaginations exist than that which China Mieville has mined in his increasingly diverse output this past decade. The oft-esteemed author made his name in speculative circles with a triumvirate of novels set in the wonderfully wretched world of Bas-Lag - the best of which, for my money, has to be The Scar, a perverse seafaring adventure that was also my first Mieville - but unlike so many once-promising new voices, this prominent proponent of the New Weird did not idly content himself by exploiting the wonderful world he had established until his dwindling legions of readers grew exhausted with it.

We might, perhaps, wish he had: neither the inevitable Young Adult experiment nor the abstract crime thriller that followed Un Lun Dun have quite recaptured the staggering sensation of exploring the seedier streets of New Crobuzon and its surroundings with one remade guide or another, and yet, Mieville's novels after Iron Council have not been without their strengths.

Un Lun Dun itself has been described as puerile, derivative drivel, and it's not difficult to see where such criticisms begin; sadly, I suspect those readers and sometime reviewers responsible for such slating resigned themselves to their ill expectations too soon, for Mieville, in the end, weaves a much more powerful and untraditional narrative than the blurb would have you believe. But I digress.

The City and the City, his last and arguably best effort notwithstanding the Bas-Lag books, was an existentialist crime thriller with a characteristic kick: the crime in question had been committed in an area on the fringe of two distinct cities that somehow exist in the same physical space. Mieville's greatest strength has always been in his settings, and the borderlines between Beszel and Ul Qoma - not to mention Breach - proved to be an environment rich enough in potential and subversiveness to rival the very best. Sadly, the brevity of The City and the City was a restrictive rather than a focusing force, and unless Mieville returns to its world, much of that inherent potential will unfortunately remain unrealised.