As a teenager I read "Triffids" and absolutely loved it - which lead me on a Wyndham reading spree. One of which was "Kraken" - which as a teenager really bored me. Having a yen to revisit some of these and many either available as audio via the library or free on Audible, I listened to this to see if my initial opinion remained the same. I certainly enjoyed it more this time but it's pacing is off. It only really gets exciting in the final third. The buildup is too long and the end is very reminiscent of how Triffids ends. ( )

The ending is arguably lame, or weak, or deus ex machina. The climax is probably somewhere around page 2. It's dated in spots, with no satellites in orbit, the Russian menace, and newspapers front and centre.

And yet, in spite of all that, I almost rated it a four.

It's an apocalypse novel. I won't say much about the plot line because it was the mystery of it that sucked me in. This one is all about the journey, and how they got from the start to the end. The end itself it turns out doesn't matter that much.

Read it, you'll like it. ( )

Aliens invade the Earth and take up residence in the deepest parts of the oceans, where we can't bomb the crap out of them, then they try to exterminate us. This was entertaining, if a little talky and dated. The unseen aliens were an effective unknowable menace, especially the invading "sea tanks" with their jellyfish-like tentacles, and the depiction of our response to a slow-rising threat was depressingly spot-on. The ending particularly resonates for those of us looking down the barrel of climate change now. Sometimes didactic, particularly in the lectures about governments not letting people defend themselves (bullets were no good against the sea tanks, anyway), and references to people who were not white and Western were cringe-worthy, but putting those things aside, it's a solid and unusual alien-invasion story. ( )

Un día, la Humanidad despierta aterrada, bajo la amenaza de "algo" terrible y desconocido que acecha en las profundidades marinas. ¡El Kraken! ¡El Kraken despierta..! Los monstruos legendarios del folklore medieval parecen cobrar nueva vida y el Kraken, mayor que una isla, diríase que vuelve por sus fueros. Pero la amenaza, pese a salir del mar, no es de este mundo. Su origen es interplanetario. Unos misteriosos seres, a los que el vulgo llama "el Kraken", han sentado sus reales en los abismos oceánicos, y desde ellos inician una guerra de conquista e invasión contra las tierras emergidas, en las que pronto cunde el pánico.

A fun tale about an alien intelligence taking over our oceans and looking to take over our land as well. My favorite scientist character's theory is that they came from jupiter, where they would be used to tons per square inch pressure
P.16:
"It began so unrecognizably. had it been more obvious – and yet it is difficult to see what could have been done effectively even if we had recognized the danger. Recognition and prevention don't necessarily go hand in hand . We recognized the potential dangers of atomic vision quickly enough – yet we could do little about them.
If we had attacked immediately – well, perhaps. But until the danger was well established we had no means of knowing that we should attack -- and then it was too late.
However it does no good to cry over our shortcomings."

P.59:
"Mallarby shook his head.
'it won't be just one bomb. and it was always too late, my dear. can you imagine us tolerating any form of rival intelligence on earth, no matter how it got here? Why, we can't even tolerate anything but the narrowest differences of views within our own race. no,' he shook his head, 'no, I'm afraid bocker's idea of fraternization never had the chance of a flea in a furnace.' "

P.93:
"Phyllis cut me off:
'mike, this isn't a game, you know. After all, a big ship has gone down, and 700 poor people have been drowned. That is a terrible thing. I dreamt last night that I was shut up in one of those little cabins when the water came bursting in.'
'yesterday –' I began, and then stopped. I had been about to say that yesterday Phyllis had poured a kettle of boiling water down a crack in order to kill a lot more than 700 ants, but thought better of it. 'yesterday,' I amended, 'a lot of people were killed in Road accidents, a lot will be today.'
'I don't see what that has to do with it,' she said."

P.164-5:
"then we had our first site of a 'sea-tank.' A curve of dull, gray metal sliding into the square, carrying away the lower corner of a house front as it came.
shots cracked at it from half a dozen different directions. The bullet splattered or thudded against it without effect. slowly, heavily, with an air of inexorability, It came on, grinding and scraping across the cobbles. It was inclining slightly to its right, away from us and towards the church, carrying away more of the corner house, unaffected by the plaster, bricks and beams that fell on it and slithered down its sides.
More shots smacked against it or ricocheted away whining, but it kept steadily on, thrusting itself into the square as something under 3 mph, massively in deflectable period soon we were able to see the whole of it.
imagine an elongated egg which has been halved down its length and set flat side to the ground, with the pointed end foremost. consider this egg to be between 30 and 35 ft long, of a drab, lusterless lead in color, and you will have a fair picture of the 'sea-tank' as we saw it pushing into the square.
there was no way of seeing how it was propelled; there may have been rollers beneath, but it seemed, and sounded, simply to grate forward on its metal belly with plenty of noise, but none of machinery. It did not jerk to turn, as a tank does, but neither did it steer like a car. It simply moved to the right on a diagonal, still pointing forwards. close behind it followed another, exactly similar contrivance which slanted its way to the left, in our direction, wrecking the house front on the nearest corner of the street as it came. a third kept straight ahead into the middle of the square, and then stopped.

P.216:
"As it happened, Phyllis and I were meeting Bocker for lunch that same day. inevitably he wanted to hear reactions to his broadcast. I gave the first reports gently. he nodded: 'most of the papers take that line,' he said. 'why was I condemned to live in a democracy where every fool's vote is equal to a sensible man's? If all the energy that is put into diddling mugs for their votes could be turned on to useful work, what a nation we could be!'... "

P.244-5:
" 'well, mine is; how do you think the thing's being done? Melting the Arctic seems a pretty formidable proposition.'
'There's been a number of guesses. they range from an incredible operation like piping warm water up from the tropics, to tapping the Earth's central heat – which I find just about as unlikely.'
'but you have your own idea?' I suggested, for it seemed improbable that he had not.
'well, I think it might be done this way. we know that they have some kind of device that will project a jet of water with considerable Force – the bottom sediment that was washed up into surface currents in a continuous flow pretty well proved that. well then, a contraption like that, used in conjunction with a heater, say an atomic reaction pile, ought to be capable of generating a quite considerable warm current. The obvious snag there is that we don't know whether they have Atomic fusion or not. So far there's been no indication that they have – unless you count our presenting them with at least one atomic bomb that didn't go off. But if they do have it, I think that might be an answer.'
'they could get the necessary uranium?'
'Why not? After all, they have forcibly established their rights, mineral and otherwise, over more than 2/3 of the world's surface. oh, yes, they could get it, all right, if they know about it.' "

P.249:
"They were not disappointed. the water lapped slowly above the parapet and against the sandbags. Here and there it began to trickle through onto the pavements. firemen, civil defense, and police watched their sections anxiously, rushing bags to reinforce wherever a trickle enlarged, shoring up weak-looking spots with Timber struts. The pace gradually became hotter. The bystanders began to help, dashing from one point to another as new Jets started up. Presently there could be little doubt what was going to happen. Some of the watching crowd withdrew, but many of them remained, in a wavering fascination. when the breakthrough came, it occurred in a dozen places on the North Bank almost simultaneously. among the spurting Jets a bag or two would begin to shift, then, suddenly, came a collapse, and a gap several yards wide through which the water poured as if it were a weir."


( )