Book 37: "Kraken" by China Mieville
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 19:58![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeBureaucracies turf-war. The FSRC were the only officers in the Met who were anything other than blitheringly inadequate to deal with the eldritch nonsense of knackery. They were the state’s witches and hammers of witches. But their remit was a historical quirk. There were no Wizardry Squads in the UK Police. No SO21 to police Crimes of Magic. The Flying Squad did not. There was only the FSRC, and technically they were not concerned with the powers of ley lines, charmed words, invoked entities, et cetera-they were a cult squad, specifically.
In practice of course it was staffed by and kept watch on all those with questionable talents. FSRC computers were loaded with occult hexware and abgrades (Geas 2.0, iScry). But the unit was obliged to maintain appearances by describing all its work in terms of the policing of religion. They had to take care, if they concluded that it was purely secular abcriminality behind the Architeuthis disappearance, to stress what links they could with London’s heresiarchs. Otherwise they would lose jurisdiction. Without cult-games at the heart of the squidnapping, it would be handed over to some brusque unsubtle unit-Serious Crime, Organised Crime. Antiquities.
It is only when the giant squid and its nine-metre tank go missing from the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum, that curator Billy Harrow learns of the existence of London's magical underworld from officers of the FSRC (the Met's Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit). But once he knows about it, he is thrown in at the deep end, and has to confront cultists and Londonmancers, cursed gang bosses and immortal assassins in his search to find the squid and prevent the coming apocalypse.
"Kraken" takes place in the present day, with Internet buzzwords like Meme and Google-fu thrown in to prove it, but it is set in a magical underworld that most of London's inhabitants never see. The police, at least, are well aware of it and the Met even has a special department to deal with magical matters, although most people are under the impression that it is a cult investigation unit.
Things I liked were the idea of the sea having an embassy in London, because such a low-lying city does need to keep in the sea's good books, and what Billy said about the squid to foil the baddie's plans was very clever. I also found the SV Brood chanting "Red thoughts, white teeth!" amusing, but then I am a huge Saki fan. On the other hand, the magical knacks seemed rather random and a little too convenient (invisible spirit pigs!), while the police's plan to fake two apocalypses on the same day didn't really make much sense and overall I don't think that "Kraken" hangs together as well as some other stories of magical London that I have read.
In practice of course it was staffed by and kept watch on all those with questionable talents. FSRC computers were loaded with occult hexware and abgrades (Geas 2.0, iScry). But the unit was obliged to maintain appearances by describing all its work in terms of the policing of religion. They had to take care, if they concluded that it was purely secular abcriminality behind the Architeuthis disappearance, to stress what links they could with London’s heresiarchs. Otherwise they would lose jurisdiction. Without cult-games at the heart of the squidnapping, it would be handed over to some brusque unsubtle unit-Serious Crime, Organised Crime. Antiquities.
It is only when the giant squid and its nine-metre tank go missing from the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum, that curator Billy Harrow learns of the existence of London's magical underworld from officers of the FSRC (the Met's Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit). But once he knows about it, he is thrown in at the deep end, and has to confront cultists and Londonmancers, cursed gang bosses and immortal assassins in his search to find the squid and prevent the coming apocalypse.
"Kraken" takes place in the present day, with Internet buzzwords like Meme and Google-fu thrown in to prove it, but it is set in a magical underworld that most of London's inhabitants never see. The police, at least, are well aware of it and the Met even has a special department to deal with magical matters, although most people are under the impression that it is a cult investigation unit.
Things I liked were the idea of the sea having an embassy in London, because such a low-lying city does need to keep in the sea's good books, and what Billy said about the squid to foil the baddie's plans was very clever. I also found the SV Brood chanting "Red thoughts, white teeth!" amusing, but then I am a huge Saki fan. On the other hand, the magical knacks seemed rather random and a little too convenient (invisible spirit pigs!), while the police's plan to fake two apocalypses on the same day didn't really make much sense and overall I don't think that "Kraken" hangs together as well as some other stories of magical London that I have read.
