I'll have the risotto with calamari in its ink, please.

The protean China Mieville has just published his new novel, Kraken, in which contemporary London is menaced by a giant squid (!) The Guardian review is here. (Is it too much to ask that book reviewers in the United States -- the only country, after all, in which I will ever live -- pay attention to literary sf?) Cool quote:

The exuberant energy and ambition of Kraken make for a complex novel packed with fascinating and original concepts. Miéville powers through that conceptual density with an action-filled plot, a technique that has served him well in earlier novels. But here the combined weight of ideas and plot press down on the characters, which struggle to grow beyond entertaining pop-cultural caricatures. For this reason the novel misses the emotional resonance and mythic qualities of the greatest urban fantasies, such as Neil Gaiman's American Gods or Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. For readers who are drawn to fantasy precisely for those qualities, Kraken may seem like a handsome but empty cadaver missing its emotional heart. But for Miéville's dedicated and growing readership, Kraken succeeds in reforming the urban fantasy around a tougher, funnier and more intellectually demanding core.