About the Author

China Mieville lives and works in London. He is two-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award (Perdido Street Station and The Scar) and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice (Perdido Street Station and Iron Council). The City & The City, an existential thriller, was published in 2009 to dazzling critical acclaim and drew comparison with the works of Kafka and Orwell (The Times) and Phillip K Dick (The Guardian).

Reviews

British fantasist Mieville mashes up cop drama, cults, popular culture, magic, and gods in a Lovecraftian New Weird caper sure to delight fans of Perdido Street Station and The City & the City. When a nine-meter-long dead squid is stolen, tank and all, from a London museum, curator Billy Harrow finds himself swept up in a world he didn't know existed: one of worshippers of the giant squid, animated golems, talking tattoos, and animal familiars on strike. Forced on the lam with a renegade kraken cultist and stalked by cops and crazies, Billy finds his quest to recover the squid sidelined by questions as to what force may now be unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Even Mieville's eloquent prose can't conceal the meandering, bewildering plot, but his fans will happily swap linearity for this dizzying whirl of outrageous details and fantastic characters. (July) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.

The theft of the preserved body of a giant squid from the British Museum confounds the detectives sent to investigate the crime, but curator Billy Harrow sees the deed as a personal affront because the creature was in his charge. Billy's attempts to find the kraken takes him through a bizarre landscape filled with squid-worshiping cultists, a man with a living tattoo, a trio of special investigators whose methods defy description or reason, and a pair of deadly scoundrels whose names alone strike terror in the hearts of those who have seen their handiwork. Set in a modern-day London awash with strangeness, the latest novel by the author of Perdido Street Station combines brilliant storytelling with doses of eccentric humor and eerily compelling horror. VERDICT Not for the squeamish, Mieville's sprawling saga calls to mind the works of H.P. Lovecraft and H.G. Wells with a distinctive 21st-century spin and should draw a large crossover audience as well as genre fans. Highly recommended. [Ebook ISBN 978-0-345-52185-9.] Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.