“Guerrillas in the myths,” really? Reaching a bit for that turn of phrase, bud.

Billy Harrow is an average joe, working at a natural history museum in London. He’s giving a tour on a normal day when it suddenly turns out that the museum’s latest prize exhibition, a preserved giant squid, is missing. Things get weird super-quick when a “special” squad of police wants to know about his connections with the magical underbelly of London, and a group of kraken-worshipping cultists want him to be their prophet, and pretty much all of London agrees that the apocalypse is nigh, and it’s all due to the missing squid.

This is my third China Mieville book, and it was actually a bit of a letdown. The other two had SUCH intricate world-building, and were so creative and unlike anything I’d ever read before, and then this one was SO Neverwhere it was a little jarring. There are a couple of evil minions, Goss and Subby, that seemed patterned too close to Croup and Vandermar, and Billy himself was so Richard it was painful. The secret, magical side of London was all there, and weird characters with ties to certain parts of the city, and all that. Instead of a girl named Door, there was a dead squid, but there were way too many similarities. I guess I prefer my Mieville books to take place on other planets, and not so much in Neil Gaiman’s backyard.

That’s not to say it was a bad book! The story was interesting, if a bit convoluted. The characters were fun, and I liked watching Billy grow from a regular guy to a reluctant squid-prophet to a bona fide hero. The ending was maybe one twist too many, but it was all very well told. This was the only Mieville book my library had, but I’ll definitely be ordering some more.