NP but Grigori. From a NYTimes--not the book reveiw---article today on china Mievelle, in which Lot 49 is alluded to

[Mark Kohut]

The book’s starting point is the kraken (pronounced CRACK-en), or giant squid. 
Huge scary squids have been an obsession of writers like Tennyson, Lovecraft, 
and H. G. Wells for the last 200 years; “Kraken” is a homage to that tradition, 
bolstered by the happy fact that the Natural History Museum in London has a 
pickled one, which gets stolen in the book. 

 
While the squid is a more “epically resonant creature,” Mr. Miéville says that 
he is in fact “a partisan of the octopus.” (His earrings turn out not to be 
totems of aggression at all, but silver casts of baby octopus tentacles, a gift 
from his girlfriend, an American doctor. He also has some little octopus 
figurines in his bathroom.)