Saturdays in Books

The first quarter of Kraken feels like a great mashup of Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul and Foucault's Pendulum with a small chance of Torchwood. Then it turns into and endless shell game where you know the ball is in Mievelle's hand the whole time, but he just keeps adding more cups as though that somehow makes the trick more interesting. If it hadn't been an audio book, so I could do other stuff while listening, I would not have finished. Even with that lowered threshold of divided attention, I still turned the speed up to 3x for the last ninety minutes. I just wanted to see if I was right about who the mastermind was. I was right, but that doesn't feel like much of a victory. I sort of appreciate the way his magic system is no system, reflecting the complex and contradictory world of new age bullshit that exists in our own, but I think Eco has already done a better job.