The story begins with Billy Harrow, a scientist working at the Darwin Center. A research and museum facility in London whose main attraction is a giant squid preserved in formalin and appearing at the center of a specimen room. When the squid is stolen, Billy becomes involved in the London underground world of cults and magic. He's completely unprepared, and his disorientation is a bit disorienting for the reader as well. That I listened to this one on audio book was probably not helpful. If you're thinking about picking it up, I'd recommend reading rather than listening.
Two thugs for hire, Gus and Subby go around tormenting all kinds of mystical folk at the direction of "The Tattoo" a arch villain reduced to, yes, the tattoo on the back of some poor sod forced to an eternity of facing backwards while the Tattoo orders his minions about. Turns out that the squid is a revered god for a Kraken-ist cult and the theft of such a large specimen signals and impending apocalypse. So the magical world is scrambling to figure out who took the squid so they can prevent such and end.
The way the story is laid out is well done except again for the middle parts which felt repetitive and fell flat. Because I listened to it on audio, I thought I had caught a word in one section that became a suspicion of a certain character through the entire book and therefore ruined the final "who done it" aspect for me, even if the the word I had thought I heard in the beginning was just a part of my own imagination. But see, that's part of the problem with the book is that there was so much extra stuff in it that I drifted off in several parts because the facts just exceeded my curiosity, even about a world that was being created whole cloth out of the myths and alleyways of London.
3/5 Stars.
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