Kraken and Mine Ha-Ha

I've finished some more books today so here's a quick review of the two of them. Let's start with Kraken by China Mieville.

Kraken is the tale of what happens when a giant squid is squidnapped from the natural history museum and starts the countdown to the apocalypse. I was really excited about this book as I loved Mieville's previous book "The City and The City". I was less enamoured with this one it must be said but it was still a good read. The number of ideas in it were astonishing, as were the words that I didn't quite understand but could get the jist of in context. I like learning as I read. It loosely has the structure of a buddy flick mixed with a chase mixed with a mystery. Our hero Billy is the guy who bottled the Squid and his companion Dane is a worshipper of said squid. Once the squid goes missing Billy is seen as a Squid Prophet and all of London's underworld is out to get him to find out what he knows, which he claims is nothing. Mix in Occult Detectives, Body Hopping Egyptian grave slaves, Magical Unions, Chaos Nazis, Sea Embassys, a talking tattoo, human radios and more besides and you've got a potent mix for lots of trouble heading towards Billy and Dane. This book may be trying to say something about religion and belief but I think its just a bit of a romp as Mieville flexes his immense imaginative muscles. Be warned there are some gruesome parts such as a vicious poking to death. It doesn't sound bad when I write it but the proper text is horrific.

"Mine Ha-Ha (Or on the Bodily education of Young girls)" is a book where I think I've missed the point. It is definitely trying to say something but I'm not entirely sure what. 'll take a stab at what its saying later. In it girls are taken to a strange bordering school and trained to be very similar and to only be able to perform. They are then reunited with the boys they knew so well as little children and the story ends. I think its meant to be about, especially at the time, how women are conditioned to be seen and not heard and to only be pretty and feminine. This is achieved by making them seperate from boys. I didn't enjoy this book. Nothing seemed to happen. It was dull. The message that forcing girls into preset pigeonholes isn't a good idea is a worthy one as noone should be forced to conform against their will but the narrator herself didn't seem to see anything wrong with her treatment. It was her passivity which undermined the book. She is writing it many years after the events and even as a grown women seems passive and uninteresting. A book I don't know what to make of but at least it was short.

This has now put me up to 2737 on Living Social. One of the downsides of using living social is that if I don't read I drop back down the table as others are reading all the time. Still keeps me motivated.