I am particularly partial to Richard Matheson--largely because he has managed to set up shop in several different genre's and produce fine and sometimes fantastic work. I was initially drawn to China Mieville because I had read that he also moves from genre to genre. Even more interesting, while bringing his marvelously odd and unique touch to each genre--he seems to be tearing the walls down that separate those genres so he can run free from one to the next. Certainly a lot of walls came down while reading KRAKEN. So many ideas and characters came flying at me that often I felt like I was dodging debris from an explosion. At once fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, mythology and comedy and yet not any of those things. The author I thought of most while reading KRAKEN was Thomas Pynchon. Both authors use many disparate elements to create their texture and their use of humor does not seem for humor's sake but more to point out that life is like that--cruel humor abounds. More surprisingly I also thought of Chester Himes. Within Himes crime novels, the city of Harlem has a pulse and breaths and seems to have a say so as to the fates of its inhabitants. In KRAKEN, London is really the main character from mundane to magnificent. It is London where the fate of the world will be decided, where a villain exists as a living tattoo and angels are made of glass, secret streets exist between other streets, and many and various cults worshipping everything from squid to ferret to the great sea (the sea by the way has a house in a middle class neighbor hood). And it all seems to draw it's power from London itself. There are normal people in KRAKEN but they do not remain so. Once they get a taste of what's going on, they become something else. Something more. I look forward to reading more by Mievell.