I Read Books: Kraken

Kraken

Billy Harrow works at the Darwin Centre, attached to the Natural History Museum in London, where he preserves specimens. Then one of their prizes, a giant squid is stolen in an impossible crime.

This leads Billy, and others into London’s magical underworld. There are cults, and suspicion first falls on the Kraken cult who worship giant squids. But there are others too, and each has their own apocalypse. Usually they are averted, either by just failing or by magical gangs breaking them up or even the police cult squad, who have a magician on board. But now everyone is forseeing an apocalypse. The Tattoo, London’s most feared gang leader is after Billy, and Grisamentum, who made him into a tattoo before dying, may be back from the dead. And someone is burning places, burning them so powerfully they are vanishing from history and geography.

The novel travels to parts of real London, many of which rarely appear in fiction, then views them again from weird angles, those of history and myth and wordplay and common belief.

Read This: For a gritty fantasy thriller about squids and London
Don’t read this: If you won’t want metaphorical truth to dance with actual truth in a confusing way