I enjoyed the premise and the first fifty pages of Kraken quite a lot, but most of the middle of the novel is a mess of too many characters and viewpoints, wild abuses of the English language, and shaggy-dog plotting. The end ties things up as well as it can, but I was left cold. I was also frustrated that so many of the "rules" of the Kraken universe are revealed so late in the book. It isn't quite deus ex machina, but it's not satisfying.

China Mieville has a brilliantly warped imagination, and he put it good effect in Perdido Street Station and The Scar, but he falls short here. Of all his novels, Kraken is closest to Un Lun Dun in style, but what worked in a young-adult novel is a little too juvenile in an adult entry.

Also, in the same way Mieville overused the word "palimpsest" in Perdido Street Station, the overworked word here is "penumbra".