Rating: 
Summary: Unable to stop reading!
Review: This is a fine example of urban fantasy with a dark twist. There is certainly nothing sweet or light in this story, yet I found it utterly absorbing and strangely believable.
Rating:
Summary: Rats Rule!
Review: This is a very good and engaging reinscription of the Pied Piper children's story. Here the rats, more or less, are the heroes and the Piper is a beautiful but psychopathic musician. It is also a text where Mieville attempts to blend, more or less successfully, Industrial Fiction with an Adult Fairy Story. So it isn't particularly innovative (that's been going on for decades - transforming fairy stories into adult fiction and sometimes serious literature [Angela Carter's work for example]) but it is an interesting read: good writing, characters, incident, crisis, plotting, etc. I do not give it 5 stars because there is nothing truly unique and inspiring about the read. You want to take a walk off the map? Read Carlton Mellick III's Electric Jesus Corpse.
Rating: 
Summary: An Old Classic Revisited
Review: What would happen if you took the Pied Piper story, brought it to modern times and set in in the London Underground? Then you'd get the very Neil Gaiman-ish book that is King Rat. China Mieville's freshman effort, a trim, effective little novel is drenched in originality, but maybe a little too much style. Saul returns home after a night of partying to find that his father has been murdered. He becomes the prime suspect. But while in jail, someone comes to bust him out; a strange looking man who can crawl on walls, squeeze through tight spaces and who acts like, well, a rat. This is King Rat, Saul's uncle. And he is about to tell his nephew a very strange tale indeed. Soon enough, Saul becomes a rat man himself, hiding in sewers and living in the darkness of the London underground (much of this seems familiar; British authors seem to have a fascination with the London underground, as Neil Gaiman has proven with his amazing Neverwhere.). But of course, all isn't well in the underground kingdom. Because Saul soon learns that the kingdom's enemy, the Pied Piper, is in town. And it is only when the Piper starts going after Saul's friends that things really get ugly, and bloody. Very original, beautifully described and told, King Rat is a one-of-a-kind novel that practically reads itself. It is an Urban fantasy where violence and darkness seems to reside in every corner you look. It is an engaging read that always keeps you guessing. So it is very unfortunate that the book falls victim to the first-time author disease. The prose is often self-indulgent; too many words are used when just a few would have sufficed. And some of the supportive characters seem to blend together because they are all so similar. But that problem is quickly resolved with the main characters, who are very colorfu, memorable and original. I had a lot of fun reading King Rat. Fans of Neil Gaiman or Charles de Lint should like this one. And the rest of you should find enough originality in here to last you for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Unusual, but not to everyone's taste
Review: What you can't deny Mr Mieville is him having exuberant fantasy and coming with the most original ideas possible. In this book he blends persuasively urban folklore, fairytale characters, modern rhythms and poetry of London dehumanized city hectic. The plot is rather simplistic, but has enough of little twists and grisly descriptions. However, the drawls of dialects his characters use are hardly intelligible sometimes, and detailed descriptions of Jungle music may bore you (if you're not the fan). A promising "try of the pen", but to enjoy China Mieville's talent to the last drop, read the superb Perdido Train Station (completely different in plot and settings)!
Rating:
Summary: It really reeks. And I mean that in a good way.
Review: When I got to the library, some other cove had checked out China Mieville's acclaimed second book "Perdido Street Station", but his first novel was still on the shelf, so I took it home instead. And through the two sittings it took me to devour it, I wasn't sorry. It's no polished masterwork. In this off-center update of the Pied Piper story, China Mieville launched his fantasy career with a barbaric yawp. It gets in your face on the first page, and it never backs off for a minute. It's skanky, percussive, violent, low-rent, alive. Especially it gets up your nose, pulsating with the smells of underground London, a dozen abbatoirs and rubbish tips. Its prose dives deep, then surfaces with dripping redolent rinds of gritty poetry in its mouth. If great graphic novels could speak, they'd talk in accents just like these. Okay, so that paragraph was a little purple. And "King Rat" is a *little* purple, forgivably so in a first effort, very forgivably in one with such a sharp, original, swiftly flowing story. All the more forgivable because of the pleasure of the dialogue when King Rat takes center stage, and starts delivering a pyrotechnic Cockney rant like some Soho Davy Crockett in a bragging contest. (If his talk gets too obscure, try Googling for "Cockney rhyming slang" to find a relevant dictionary.) He's a marvelous creation, darkly comic and genuinely menacing. For a marvel, Mieville makes his unlikely blend of proletarian realism, dance floor Jungle and Perraultian fairy tale work. I thoroughly enjoyed "King Rat", and now I'm spoiling for more, of what from an author this inventive will assuredly not be just more of the same.
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