Hardcover, published Michael Joseph 1980, (original publication 1953.)

Frankly I have always liked this book more than The Day of the Triffids although I do really like that one as well. But with Kraken I like the main characters Mike and Phyllis better, and the story of their survival I find slightly more interesting as well. One of the things I like about the book too is that it doesn’t cater to the lowest denominator. In one place Mike doesn’t just quote a very appropriate Latin tag, Phyllis responds, also in Latin and in the correct singular. How many authors could get away with that these days? Poetry (again appropriately) is quoted several times too, and then on the other side, a clever and amusing original song appears. Nor, as were many of the books from the 1950s, is this a ‘slim volume’, it’s a good 100,000 words plus. Buy this book and get genuine value for money.

The story was written before much was known about Global Warming, nowadays if you write SF about that, you have all the scientific stuff. In the day when this was written if you wanted to drown the world you needed a McGuffin. Wyndam found it in a possible invasion from outer space by something that needed the world to have increased darkness and water pressure. (Around this time Murray Leinster produced a very similar book The Listeners.) In The Kraken wakes, Mike and Phyllis Watson are journalists for the English Broadcasting Corporation. (mildly amusingly, they keep having to explain that they work for the EBC not the BBC.) They work mostly as a team and have good jobs and two comfortable homes, one a flat in London, the other a cottage in Cornwall. And in case we get the impression they’re overpaid, the information is given that the latter was purchased with a legacy Phyllis received. The book is ‘written by Mike’ and begins with a couple of pages that take up the story towards the end of events, it then reverts to the very beginning, always a fine device for catching the reader’s attention.

Briefly the plot goes as follows, while on honeymoon Mike and Phyllis see five strange objects come down from the sky into the sea. They later discover that a number of sightings of this kind are being made but mostly brushed off as fitting into the area of UFOs and cranks. However events escalate and ships are being sunk until Governments realise that they are in a war. They retaliate, and in counter-retaliation from the deeps, warm currents begin to circulate that melt ice caps. The water rises, Mike and Phyllis, originally broadcasting from the London HQ of their organisation, finally decide to retreat to their cottage in Cornwall. They reach there safely and are startled some time later to receive a visit from a neighbour saying that the authorities are asking for them in radio messages. Having reorganised and gained better control again the Government wants them back to do their old job and the book ends with Mike and Phyllis deciding to return as requested and musing on events.

The characters of Mike and Phyllis were both believable and likeable and the whole plot hung together extremely well. They don’t live a life that’s unusual, they live and work in a major city, they have a tragedy (the loss of a child at 18 months) they have good jobs that they enjoy, and a rock-solid marriage that fuels much of the background. Both have strengths and weaknesses and they know this, so that they tend to step back and give either the best opportunity for whatever they’ll do best. The book’s time line is obscure. There is very little internal evidence of exactly how much time is passing but reading it most recently I realise that the events take place over quite a number of years, perhaps as much as a decade. It didn’t detract from my enjoyment, rather the reverse, as being told over and over again exactly how many weeks/months/years are passing and hammering on and on about it have on occasion slowed down a book’s plot and decreased my pleasure in reading it. There is just sufficient mention in throwaway phrases now and again to provide the knowledge that events are taking place over a span of years and that was all that I found necessary. In short, written in 1953 or not, this book still holds up as an excellent read and I recommend it.

(It may have also inspired Thunder my Ocicat. I was reading clever one-liners to him from the book when I reread it recently when he suddenly leapt off the bed and charged several times around the house, leaving odd items crashing in his wake. An attempt to emulate the book title as a charade perhaps…?)

Hardcover, ROC, June 2013.

Also a Christmas present and received with cries of joy. I like much of what this author produces, (he lost me partway through his Deathstalker series) and while I don’t like the Drood series (of which this is the 7^th ) quite as much as other series like the Nightside, Haven, the loose ‘Blue Moon’ grouping, and Ghost Finders, I do enjoy it sufficiently to have the series shelved in my ‘permanent’ section. Interestingly in this book there is substantial bleedover from others of Green’s series too, with Nightside and Ghost Finders characters popping up in a number of places. In Casino Infernale too I think that a reader would have had to have read at least the last couple of books in the series to know the background. If you haven’t you could have trouble picking up a number of the plot threads because this is an intensification of previous action.

Eddie and his beloved Molly Metcalf, have been given a mission by the Department of the Uncanny. They are to attend Casino Infernale and break the bank that backs the casino, The Shadow Bank. Many have tried, to date none have succeeded, but Eddie and Molly had better not fail because those behind the Shadow Bank have plans and not good ones. Entangled with all this there’s a return of the car (with a personality all of its own,) J.C. From Ghost Hunters, an appearance of the Nazi version of Valkyries, several million sort-of-clones, an equine God, two great characters from Shadows Fall, and a resounding ending in which the bad guys become the good guys…sort-of.

The ongoing mystery of just how Molly’s parents did die and who was really responsible moves on slightly, with hints that the person they know to have committed the actual killings may have been justified in some way, under duress, or even not quite as guilty as claimed. IF you have already read at least the book before this one, Casino Infernale is recommended. If not, start at the beginning and get to it. The journey? Fun.

large-size soft cover, Titan Books, September 2005.

The author produced only 13 volumes of the Modesty Blaise full-length books and short stories collections that weren’t comic strip, I loved all of them, (see the entry – Modesty Blaise in my Have You Overlooked – ? section. So I finally decided to buy one of the comic strip books just to see if theyw ere readable. It was as I feared, for someone who prefers actual words, and who reads naturally at a very high speed, a book of three ‘strip’ stories isn’t nearly as good, but it’s still a long way past better than nothing. The artwork is very well reproduced, the stories are good with the authentic feel, and other familiar characters such as Sir Gerald Tarrant are involved. And, I could also pick out events/characters here and there in the three tales, that had also popped up in the books. Not exactly the same, no, but just sufficiently similar that I could see perhaps their genesis in the strip before their far more fully fleshed-out appearance in the books.

Titan list another nine in this large-size softcover comic strip reprint series, each so far as I know, with three stories. One or two of those may be too close to the books, so if you have the books you may not want to buy the Titan strips that cover those stories, but if you don’t have the books and like comic strip, then these are probably the way to go. If you’d prefer the books but don’t have them, I see that The Book Depositary UK seems to have at least some of the original books in currently reprinted editons at very reasonable prices. I recommend the books/story collections wholeheartedly, and the comic strip books reservedly. However I should add that I plan to buy others of them myself so the reservation is more personal, and isn’t too stringent.