Kraken (2010) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Billy Harrow: Main Character - poor Billy is minding is own business, going about is daily work at the Museum, when the Kraken goes missing. He is dragged into a crazy, magical world of 'knacking' in London's most seedy underground.
• Dane Parnell: Security officer at the Museum where Billy works.
• Vardy: Add a description of this character.
• Kath Collingswood: Female Police Constable working for the FSRC (Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime) unit of the Metropolitan Police. Has the "knack" and uses this magical skill to aid in the police work of tracking down Billy and Dane.
• Patrick Vardy: A psychology professor.
• Grisamenthum
• Baron: Chief Inspector
• Tattoo
• Chaos Nazis
• Knuckleheads
• Marge: Leon's girlfriend.
• Goss
• Wati
• Paul
• Leon: Billy's friend.
• Grisamentum
• Subby
• Byrne
• Jason
• Simon
• Cole
• Moore
• Saira
• Mulholland: Chief Inspector.
• Miss Tilley
• Al Adler
• Clem
• Architeuthis: Archie - the giant Squid at the centre of the tale.
• Fitch
• Kirk
• Jean
• Darius
• Darwin
• Steenstrup
• Tribble
• Marcus
• Harris
• Anders

Quotes edit see section history

• “They explained. London was full of dissident gods.”

• “The roofs streamed like urinals.”

  Narrator

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• ANY MOMENT CALLED NOW IS ALWAYS FULL OF POSSIBLES.

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• “He knows religion is bollocks,” Collingswood said. “He just wishes he didn’t. That’s why he understands the nutters. That’s why he hunts them. He misses pure faith. He’s jealous.”

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• Gods are among us and they care nothing and are nothing like us. This is how we are brave: we worship them anyway.

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• “What my colleague is getting at,” Baron said, “is we’re facing a wave of St. Johns. A bit of an epidemic of eschatologies. We live,” he said, too flatly for any humour to be audible, “in the epoch of competing ends.”

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• “Yeah, but you pass. You’re like, you’re in deep cover,” Leon said. “You can sneak out of the nerd ghetto and hide the badge and bring back food and clothes and word of the outside world.”

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• The computers within the adjacent building had long ago achieved self-awareness and their own little singularity, learned magic from the Internet, and by a combine of necromantics and UNIX had written into existence little digital devils to do the servers’ bidding.

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• “Sometimes you can’t get bogged down in the how,” Baron said. “Sometimes things happen that shouldn’t, and you can’t let that detain you. But the why? we can make headway with.”

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• The dead gossip: it is the reverberation of that gossip against the surface tension of death that the better mediums hear. It is like listening to whispered secrets through a toilet door. It is a crude and muffled susurrus.

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• Vardy did not want to eradicate the idea of evolution: he wanted to rewind the fact of it. And with evolution—that key, that wedge, that wellspring—would all those other things follow, the drably vulgar contingent weak godlessness that had absolutely nothing going for it at all except, infuriatingly, its truth.

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• quiddity. Their—the word came to Billy and would not lie down—squiddity.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• London Stone
• Tattoo
• Mr. Harrow
• Krakenist
• Hoxton
• Londonmancer
• Soho
• Camden

Organizations edit see section history

• FSRC: The Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit
• Teuthies: Worshippers of the giant squd.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. China Miéville (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Locus Fantasy Award (2011: Best Fantasy Novel, #1)
• The Kitschies (Finalist, 2010: The Red Tentacle for Best Novel, Finalist)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PR6063.I265 K73 2010
• Dewey: 813

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Profanity, Language,

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Fantasy › Epic