King Rat

Rating:
Summary: Phenominal Urban Fantasy
Review: "King Rat" is brilliant. Mieville manages to wrap up Drum & Bass culture with the underlying creepiness inherent in old fables in a mix that is reminiscent of Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere", and yet uniquely its own. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.

Rating:
Summary: King Rat
Review: A glimmering in the shadows. A new king is born. King Rat!!! The twists and turns of this novel smash the light-hearted dreams of childhood against a world woven of concrete and brick. I can't wait for China's next novel!

Rating:
Summary: What happened to technology?
Review: A gritty, fascinating novel much of the way through, but towards the end breaks down due to its lack of logic.

There are more complete plot summaries elsewhere on this page. But briefly--the half-human half-rat-god Saul, his humanlike/godlike/ratlike relative King Rat, and the similar entities Anansi King of the Spiders and Loplop King of the Birds fight the evil Piper. The Piper is a mass serial killer who can dominate any human, animal, and even the Kings of the animals by making them dance to the appropriate tune of his flute. Usually till they die of exhaustion but sometimes to achieve more long-term ends; that is, the deaths of still others. He also kills people in messy manual ways, using his flute as a physical weapon.

And partway through the novel the Piper discovers sound recordings, which makes him _really_ dangerous. It seems to me he should have done this earlier in the 20th century. But maybe when you're hundreds of years old you get conservative.

Obviously, the Piper has to be stopped--even though the three Kings and Saul all together may not even be a match for him. Their air of desperation is convincing, except--after a battle where Saul is forced to crush Loplop's eardrums to keep him from hearing the flute, I started thinking "Ear plugs!" Loplop and Anansi and King Rat seem more or less humanoid in form, so--why not? They seem out of touch with modern life, but surely Saul would think of ear plugs?

And during one of the hand-to-hand combat scenes with the Piper, I started thinking, "Guns!" Why don't they even up the odds a bit with some good weapons? Maybe even a submachine gun? Saul's a modern, technologically hip guy who grew up in a seedy neighborhood. Surely he can get guns? Especially since he's learned how to be quasi-invisible (the Kings already know this) and can therefore easily evade people and steal.

Also, the music descriptions are really dull . . . I think if those had not slowed down the novel so much toward the end its lack of logic would not have been as obvious.

Still, it's a well-written horrific fantasy.

Rating:
Summary: Modest Compared To "Perdido Street Station"
Review: After reading Mieville's phenomenal "Perdido Street Station" I rushed right out to buy his first novel, "King Rat." I could have delayed my haste. While also stylish and distinctively written, this dark, urban fantasy, compared to his second work, is a rough cut, much more loosely written and barely approaching the wonders or skill of writing present in the following novel. While I may be grudging of comment by comparison, "Perdido Street Station" is a masterpiece of speculative fiction, whereas "King Rat" reads as a someways good but fledgling effort. In many respects there is little to distinguish it from early Charles De Lint, though Mieville comes across here as more hip and involved with the music he provides as an underlying theme.

While certainly a departure from the ordinary fantasy, written with a degree of verve and suspense, drawing, as another reviewer has stated, upon the folklore of the Piper of Hamelin and tales of the rat king, placed within the context of modern day London and its vibrant, in part underground music scene, this tale lacks both the riveting use of language and the vivid world creation found in the author's second novel. Unlike "Perdido Street Station," as others have additionally noted, here the characters remain relatively flat, perhaps in part intentionally reflecting the cartoon characters referenced in the novel. As earlier stated, more loosely written and evolved, the cord of metaphor underlying the basic storyline never seems as fully integrated or realized as in Mieville's second novel, unable to entirely lift the tale above the surface of its active, running narrative, or significantly set it apart from other and equally skilled writers of urban fantasy.

Though I suspect fans of urban fantasy may find my observations too harsh, or critical by comparison, it is doubtful had I even not read "Perdido Street Station" that I would have been enamoured with this novel. Good but far from great, this is a very respectable first effort that should be applauded for what it attempts, even if not entirely successful. One catches glimpses of the brilliance later displayed and captured fully in "Perdido Street Station," as well as the author's desire to push speculative fiction beyond its normal boundaries. Nonetheless, I can only give this effort at best three and a half stars.

Rating:
Summary: Wild exuberant fantasy!
Review: Alright, but skip this one in favor of Perdido Street Station, which includes more characters in Mieveille's amazing vein of mythological/human/creature and much better plotting than King Rat, his first published novel.

Rating:
Summary: Citizen Rat
Review: Alright, so this novel is no Perdido Street Station , but it was Mieville's first book and it is a gripping, well-written piece in its own right. The same urban decay and chaos that made Perdido a masterpiece is already evident in King Rat. However, while Perdido was layered, complicated, intense, and grand in it's scope, King Rat is more of a one idea exploration. Still,its well worth the read and hasn't stopped my high expectations for the next Mieville novel. Here's an odd recommendation: Read Neal Gaiman's "American Gods" and King Rat sequentially - the books share an important yet incidental character...

Rating:
Summary: Good concepts, flat style.
Review: Brought and read this morning. Interesting concepts and good development of the supernatural characters, but I felt the mundanes got somewhat sidelined - they were all fairly one dimensional. The narration was pretty flat, too, and showed definite signs of thesaurusitis - though I liked the style adopted for the Animal Superiors' dialogue (nice use of Cockney rhyming slang, for one). Lacked a certain sense of the streets, too - the supernatural side was there, but not the reality.

I strongly suspect the author of being an upper-class poser, I have to admit, seeing as everybody I know who went to Cambridge (as he did) and is into drum'n'bass came from a public school background - and his mother and sister are called Claudia and Jemima, which is a pretty fine class pointer over here. So I doubt he's ever been near real urban poverty - though I might be leaping to false conclusions here. Most of Jungle is posing, anyway, and at least he had the good humour to take the mickey out of it at points.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating but Deeply Flawed
Review: China Mieville is, today, regarded as something of a Fantasy fiction It Boy, a reputation due mostly to his second novel, "Perdido Street Station", and enhanced by his third, "The Scar". Not nearly as much discussion has been generated by his first novel, "King Rat", and after reading it I'm inclined to see why. The book, an ambitious (over-ambitious, as it turns out) mix of fairy tale and urban grime which lends new meaning to the term "subculture", has many aspects that are worth admiring - the wealth of ideas, genuinely gripping action sequences and gorgeous descriptions alone make it worth a read. Unfortunately, its flaws are deep-seated and impossible to ignore, resting mainly with the book's almost unbelievably one-dimensional characterisations.

The human characters in the book are, without doubt, the weakest. Fabian and Natasha exist only to serve in the traditional Damsels-in-Distress role (an apt comparison, as the book is a much more traditional Good-versus-Evil tale than it likes to think it is). Inspector Crowley is even worse off: a cliched Cop-with-a-Hunch, Mieville makes some half-hearted attempts at sketching a personality for him before abandoning him altogether. Deborah, in her bizarrely brief appearance, serves no purpose whatsoever other than cheap shock value at her fate. Saul, perhaps, comes off the best of all the characters in the novel (yes, I place him squarely in the "human" camp, as he gives no evidence that his psychology is in any real way different from ours); we are at least privy to his true thoughts and emotions, which is more than can be said for anyone else in the book - particularly, sadly, the non-human characters (King Rat, Anansi, Loplop and the Piper), the book's most conceptually interesting people.

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block here lies in Mieville's decision to feature characters who are, literally, animals in human form, and then keeping them true to their animal natures - no anthropomorphisation here, no undue human emotions. While admirable in theory, this ultimately proves to be a blind alley in terms of characterisation: animals are not capable of depth or emotional development, and as such the interesting concepts that make up these characters are ultimately all that there is to them. Loplop, in particular, is terribly mishandled - we never get to know or understand him in any way, he vows a ludicrously motivated vengeance upon Saul that never comes to pass, and, ultimately, just disappears from the book entirely, his fate never revealed, as though Mieville just forgot about him.

The Piper, too, is a paper-thin character, imbued with less depth than even the most puerile of Batman's rogues. Absolutely nothing is revealed about this man - he's a sadist and he wants everyone to "dance to his tune", but _why_? What made him this way? Was he once human? Is he some kind of demon or malevolent spirit, as his fate seems to imply? Unless Mieville pens a sequel - as he seems to indicate that he planned to, at least at the time of the book's writing - we'll never know.

Perhaps the saddest of the missed opportunities, though, is personified by the title character, King Rat. Easily the most charismatic and intriguing of the book's characters - certainly, he's a scene-stealer whenever he shows up - he too is ultimately let down by poor characterisation: we know exactly as much about him by the book's end as we did at the beginning. Again, Mieville's decision to have his nature be purely animal, never evolving beyond sheer rat instinct, proves a fatal constraint: he and Saul have the kind of family history that demands that King Rat undergo some kind of character development (not a redemption or anything of that sort, but _some_ kind of development), yet this never happens; nor are we given any insight into his alien psychological makeup. He's just there for local colour, it seems.

And this book has no lack of that, despite the monochromatic London locales; Mieville's biggest strength, as displayed here, is his descriptive language. Some of the imagery is incredibly vivid and memorable - Kay trussed up in the train station, for example, or Saul's flight from the police station. You never have any trouble picturing the characters (with the exception of the under-described Saul), or the locations.

Unfortunately, however, Mieville's descriptive powers fail him when it comes to the frankly embarrassing passages dealing with Jungle music, which serve only to instantly date the book. Using a certain genre of music as a pivotal plot point in a novel is never a good idea, as the visceral experience of listening to that music never seems to come across in prose (particularly if you're like me and know precisely zilch about the relatively obscure genre of Jungle, thus making you feel at times as though this book is a club you're not cool enough to be a member of).

Ultimately, "King Rat" is an entertaining but hollow experience: a superhero comic dressed up as thoughtful literature. Some of Mieville's beautiful descriptive passages momentarily trick you into thinking that there's more to this than meets the eye, but there really isn't; the book, with its teenage-boy superpower fantasies and simplistic Hero-versus-Villain storyline (resolved in a big fight scene, naturally), is essentially just "Spider-Man does the Sewers".

However, it bears remembering that this _is_ a first novel, with all the pitfalls that phrase implies; and I for one am absolutely willing to give Mieville's later works a try, as all signs seem to indicate that he has developed in leaps and bounds since writing this book. I certainly hope this is the case; he is most definitely prodigiously talented, and it is deeply refreshing to find a new novelist whose biggest flaw lies in his _over_-ambition, rather than his lack thereof.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating but Deeply Flawed
Review: China Mieville is, today, regarded as something of a Fantasy fiction It Boy, a reputation due mostly to his second novel, "Perdido Street Station", and enhanced by his third, "The Scar". Not nearly as much discussion has been generated by his first novel, "King Rat", and after reading it I'm inclined to see why. The book, an ambitious (over-ambitious, as it turns out) mix of fairy tale and urban grime which lends new meaning to the term "subculture", has many aspects that are worth admiring - the wealth of ideas, genuinely gripping action sequences and gorgeous descriptions alone make it worth a read. Unfortunately, its flaws are deep-seated and impossible to ignore, resting mainly with the book's almost unbelievably one-dimensional characterisations.

The human characters in the book are, without doubt, the weakest. Fabian and Natasha exist only to serve in the traditional Damsels-in-Distress role (an apt comparison, as the book is a much more traditional Good-versus-Evil tale than it likes to think it is). Inspector Crowley is even worse off: a cliched Cop-with-a-Hunch, Mieville makes some half-hearted attempts at sketching a personality for him before abandoning him altogether. Deborah, in her bizarrely brief appearance, serves no purpose whatsoever other than cheap shock value at her fate. Saul, perhaps, comes off the best of all the characters in the novel (yes, I place him squarely in the "human" camp, as he gives no evidence that his psychology is in any real way different from ours); we are at least privy to his true thoughts and emotions, which is more than can be said for anyone else in the book - particularly, sadly, the non-human characters (King Rat, Anansi, Loplop and the Piper), the book's most conceptually interesting people.

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block here lies in Mieville's decision to feature characters who are, literally, animals in human form, and then keeping them true to their animal natures - no anthropomorphisation here, no undue human emotions. While admirable in theory, this ultimately proves to be a blind alley in terms of characterisation: animals are not capable of depth or emotional development, and as such the interesting concepts that make up these characters are ultimately all that there is to them. Loplop, in particular, is terribly mishandled - we never get to know or understand him in any way, he vows a ludicrously motivated vengeance upon Saul that never comes to pass, and, ultimately, just disappears from the book entirely, his fate never revealed, as though Mieville just forgot about him.

The Piper, too, is a paper-thin character, imbued with less depth than even the most puerile of Batman's rogues. Absolutely nothing is revealed about this man - he's a sadist and he wants everyone to "dance to his tune", but _why_? What made him this way? Was he once human? Is he some kind of demon or malevolent spirit, as his fate seems to imply? Unless Mieville pens a sequel - as he seems to indicate that he planned to, at least at the time of the book's writing - we'll never know.

Perhaps the saddest of the missed opportunities, though, is personified by the title character, King Rat. Easily the most charismatic and intriguing of the book's characters - certainly, he's a scene-stealer whenever he shows up - he too is ultimately let down by poor characterisation: we know exactly as much about him by the book's end as we did at the beginning. Again, Mieville's decision to have his nature be purely animal, never evolving beyond sheer rat instinct, proves a fatal constraint: he and Saul have the kind of family history that demands that King Rat undergo some kind of character development (not a redemption or anything of that sort, but _some_ kind of development), yet this never happens; nor are we given any insight into his alien psychological makeup. He's just there for local colour, it seems.

And this book has no lack of that, despite the monochromatic London locales; Mieville's biggest strength, as displayed here, is his descriptive language. Some of the imagery is incredibly vivid and memorable - Kay trussed up in the train station, for example, or Saul's flight from the police station. You never have any trouble picturing the characters (with the exception of the under-described Saul), or the locations.

Unfortunately, however, Mieville's descriptive powers fail him when it comes to the frankly embarrassing passages dealing with Jungle music, which serve only to instantly date the book. Using a certain genre of music as a pivotal plot point in a novel is never a good idea, as the visceral experience of listening to that music never seems to come across in prose (particularly if you're like me and know precisely zilch about the relatively obscure genre of Jungle, thus making you feel at times as though this book is a club you're not cool enough to be a member of).

Ultimately, "King Rat" is an entertaining but hollow experience: a superhero comic dressed up as thoughtful literature. Some of Mieville's beautiful descriptive passages momentarily trick you into thinking that there's more to this than meets the eye, but there really isn't; the book, with its teenage-boy superpower fantasies and simplistic Hero-versus-Villain storyline (resolved in a big fight scene, naturally), is essentially just "Spider-Man does the Sewers".

However, it bears remembering that this _is_ a first novel, with all the pitfalls that phrase implies; and I for one am absolutely willing to give Mieville's later works a try, as all signs seem to indicate that he has developed in leaps and bounds since writing this book. I certainly hope this is the case; he is most definitely prodigiously talented, and it is deeply refreshing to find a new novelist whose biggest flaw lies in his _over_-ambition, rather than his lack thereof.

Rating:
Summary: Fine Literary Debut By Britain's Best New Fantasist
Review: China Mieville made a more stunningly original debut in fantasy than J. K. Rowling did in her "Harry Potter" series in his harsh, often bitter, urban fantasy "King Rat". It is a mesmerizing, occasionally elegant, mix of the "King Rat" and "Pied Piper of Hamlin" fairy tales melded with the underground grunge musical world of late 1990's London. Mieville demonstrates much of his literary command of English prose which would serve him so well in his impressive steampunk novels "Perdido Street Station" and "The Scar". Fans of Neil Gaiman's work will undoubtedly enjoy "King Rat" for its dark atmosphere and crisp prose.

Saul Garamond unexpectedly finds his estranged father dead when he returns to their London flat. Soon he is met by a mysterious stranger, King Rat, who tells Garamond of his royal heritage. Stalking Saul is an equally mysterious flautist, who seems interested primarily in causing much mayhem and death. Mieville sends Garamond off on a wild, thrilling odyssey through the sewers and tunnels of London.