Looks like a synopsis of Mieville’s mysterious Kraken has finally hit the web:
The Natural History Museum’s prize exhibit – a giant squid – suddenly disappears. This audacious theft leads Clem, the research scientist who has recently finished preserving the exhibit, into a dark urban underworld of warring cults and surreal magic. It seems that for some, the squid represents a god and should be worshiped as such. Clem gradually comes to realise that someone may be attempting to use the squid to trigger an apocalypse. And so it is now up to him and a renegade squid-worshiper named Dean to find a way of stopping the destruction of the world as they know it whilst themselves surviving the all out-gang warfare that they have unwittingly been drawn into…
Kraken, which is due for release in May, 2010, has been complete for a while now (supposedly handed in on the same day as The City & The City, Mieville’s most recently published novel), but was put on hold until 2010, to give The City & The City some breathing room. Say anything for China Mieville, but don’t say he isn’t bloody prolific.
As for Kraken, it’s certainly a novel I’ll keep my eye on after finishing (and enjoying) The City & The City. I mean… who can turn down apocalypse, renegade squid-worshippers named Dean and dark urban underworlds of warring cults and surreal magic? I can’t, especially when it comes from one of the leading names of mind-fuck Fantasy.
