This YA by Zafon is a quick read. It is actually the first book he ever published, and it shows. It is not as polished as Shadow of the Wind or Angel's Game, and obviously written to a very different audience. Still, it is puts Harry Potter and 99% of the genre to shame. If you hate clowns and love pseudo-religious horror, this one is for you.

8 / 10

Ok, so I finally finished China Mieville's Kraken. It was a fantastic, smart, and difficult read. It reads at first like an H. P. Lovecraft tribute, but then slowly begins to twist into a shape as convoluted and closed-up as the hallways of a schematised housing project. The novel is full of tributes to Neil Gaiman's American God's, but continues and expands on London's Mievillian prefixes: un, ab, non, and aus. It is about krakens, bottles, angels, evolution, serial killers, and living tattoos. I can't recommend it enough.

Cons: The American edition may be a bit different, but in my UK copy there is quite a bit of London slang (only some of it rhyming), which may prove difficult to the uninitiated.

9 / 10