Rating: 
Summary: Cool dark action and mood, bit pretentious, silly climax
Review: This book reads like a cartoon spin-off movie: it's Batman/X-men/Spiderman (in this case our (tortured disenchanted teen) hero finds he's got super rat powers). It's all about the dark mood. It's very self-consciously visual: at one point Miéville actually describes a scene as looking 'like a page out of a graphic novel'. It almost crosses the line of trying just a bit hard to be cool - and as we all know a definitive thing about cool is that you're NOT trying. OK, it does cross the line with his raptures about 'jungle' as the supreme art form (as opposed to the faddish derivative that it is). But we've got the classic props - troubled rebellious youth telling their elders to stick it, dark, gritty city scenes, gratuitous use of the `f' word, loud music - no sex though, which is a refreshing variation from formula. Although now I think of it, the movies I just mentioned are relatively low on sex too. It feels very cyberpunk even though it's not set in the future: anti-suburban, our hero isn't that heroic (I don't see him using his powers like Superman to set up shop to protect the weak).
The ride is gripping enough, if reliant on moderately frequent almost `horror' violence. The characters are not throwaways, but remember this is not a novel based on relationships nearly as much as special FX style action.
The climax was really annoying (spoiler warning). I can see why he stuck with it even if the obvious OBVIOUS flaw was screaming at him too. It was perfect for Miéville's purposes to have the piper's discovery of multi-tracking in `Jungle' DJ music as his ultimate weapon: a fantastic new art form grants the siren-manipulator the means of entrancing several species at once - even undoing our heroic hybrid (who is saved, hooray, because he gets down on the bass, baby). He built to this and spun it for all it was worth. Now lets, in no particular order - actually, no, I'll save the most numbingly obvious flaw until last - list the problems here:
a) If the piper has always been limited to a single melody through his monophonic instrument, he has always been open to simultaneous attack. At least Miéville anticipates this objection by saying his animals can never take the chance that it will be them who will be targeted in a multiple attack, but there are several places in the book where his birdman, ratman or (his version of) spiderman do place themselves in just such risk. It's not as if Saul makes all the difference - the `animals' are never assured that he's a match for the piper;
b) Jungle music is, I'm sure, innovative in some ways, but hardly the first instance of multi-tracking, something that has been used extensively for decades. Recorded music is hardly a recent development, overdubbing likewise;
c) Indeed, polyphonic music is not an innovation - try some of that hot-off-the-press Bach. What? Several melodies at once? Inconceivable! OK, sure, piano-accordion could hardly be the instrument of choice for a cool arch-villain ... but as I recall Jimi Hendrix looked pretty inspiring with his guitar (something you can even play polyphonic Bach tunes on if you're John Williams). Simultaneous melody is, like, so (centuries) old...
d) Ear plugs (Odysseus picked this a while ago);
e) But leaving all these aside, it just gets way too silly to have all these resourceful enemies of the piper pulling out their hair going, "Oh no, he's using amplified music! Whatever could we possibly do to overcome that??". Um, excuse me, but aren't there just a few ways you could pull out the plug? (Sshhh, don't say that, it'll ruin the whole suspense thing). Nobody even tries to. For goodness sake, you could just throw something heavy at the DAT player, cut through a lead, go outside and pull a fuse, noodle down the street and blow up the local grid. All would seem a wiser course than running towards the piper and away from the ridiculously simple weakness in his obvious weapon.
It's just such a stupid hub for the climax to turn on. I mean, fantastic if you ignore the obvious. It reminds me of the equally stupid climax of Die Hard 2, where - to great visual and emotional effect - Bruce Willis lights up the fuel spill of the escaping hoons, blowing up their plane and providing the lighting to enable all the other planes to land. A great finish - as long as you can stop that little voice from saying, "Um, why didn't someone think of another way of lighting up the runway before this?" Headlights? Flares? Petrol generators? Fires? Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Sorry, but this really hurt. Overall the mood is cool and the pages slide by. I realise I'm being a bit elitist with the music references, but the glorification of `jungle' as the be all and end all did make me gag - as if it's the first time anyone's ever discovered the power of bass. There's some definitive immaturity in the way Miéville praises it by saying, "It's not Everything But the f-ing Girl". Great players in all sorts of styles are often generous in their praise and appreciation of other styles - they can love, say, funk, without having to add, "because Classical is boring, and country is stupid, and jazz is pretentious." Part of growing up is realising there's a world outside your tiny sub-culture, and just because something isn't the same as `yours' doesn't make it `wrong'. If the art you love is really good, it's good enough to not be threatened by the existence of other good art. (Disclaimer: this is an overreaction of someone who teaches music to high-schoolers who think anything that hasn't been on video-hits in the last six months must automatically suck. Including `Jungle').
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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