Customer Reviews

King Rat

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First novel by inventive left-wing fantasy author China Mieville, in which young Saul Garamond comes to terms with his true identity as a half-rat superhero, after the murder of his father. Set in the shadowy, seamy underbelly of London, this novel is also about the esoteric world of drum-and-bass music. The characterisation is fairly flat, and there really should be a bit more of a background to Saul; King Rat is not quite in the same league as the Bas-Lag novels, but still displays a brilliant imagination, and a rather anarchic mix and match approach which I find very stimulating.

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.

King Rat is inspired by Neil Gaiman's NeverWhere. But it is not a copy. Mieville has his own voice and vision.
This is not the glitzy West End of the tourists, or the City of Big Business. This is the London of the poor, the outcasts, the shabby projects. The London of the urban tribes outside of society.
An ancient evil has returned to clear up unfinished business. The old King Rat failed to protect his people, and the rats dethroned him. But they are now confused and afraid, and lack leadership. The King Rat sees a chance to regain his throne, and Saul Garamond will be his tool.
Mieville brings new twist to old story plots. There is where I find some of his brilliance. The story is interesting to the end. At no time did I know what was going to happen next.
He writes in a poetic, yet fluent language. I even highlighted some passages because his descriptions rival Dante's.

Texture, scent, colour. I've not read anything this, well, real in a long time. Even when it's not something you'd really want to smell or sense, Mieville lets you have it full on. I enjoyed Ann Rice's early works for the same reason. I knew how the curtains in a room would feel under my fingertips, and how musty they'd smell. Mieville is much in the same vein in that regard, one of the best sensory descriptive writers I've encountered yet. A gripping story, too. Read his newer work!!!

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.

China Mieville, King Rat (Tor, 1998)

It amazes me, after having read King Rat, that China Mieville didn't start getting widespread recognition until after his third novel, Perdido Street Station. King Rat heralded the coming of a great new writer, and most of the planet ignored it. Their loss.

Saul Garamond comes home one night after a camping trip and immediately goes to bed. He is awakened the next morning by the police, who suspect him of killing his father, who took a plunge out their sixth-story apartment window sometime during Saul's absence. He's held in prison overnight, but during his stay there, a fellow who calls himself King Rat slips into Saul's cell and breaks him out. For Saul is the key to the defeat of King Rat's oldest and most powerful enemy...

Set amid the Jungle craze that hit London in the mid-nineties, and spending a good deal of time in the sewers underneath London, King Rat achieves what Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere came so close to but missed by a hair-taking modern London and making it into a completely new place, filled with wonder and magic. Seeing it from a different point of view (but unlike Gaiman, Mieville gives us a point of view that actually exists inside the fantasy world-the point of view of the homeless). A number of previous reviewers have commented that it helps when reading the novel to know a good deal about Cockney rhyming slang and Jungle music. I know diddly about either, other than that they exist, and still found the novel easy enough to follow (while some of the slang terms I couldn't figure out for the life of me, the context of their use made the meanings obvious).

Like Perdido Street Station, King Rat shows Mieville as more than a capable writer, but one possessed of greatness. He weaves the threads of the novel together perfectly, creating a design that, while obvious, still throw in the odd twist here and there. You've read them before, yet somehow they're still unexpected. After a while, the fantasy aspects of the novel recede into the background, and you're reading an adventure novel (albeit a very weird one); only the best fantasy can do that.

If there is a problem with the book, it's that it's a little too quickly paced. The kind of pacing that works well in horror films-you drop a clue, then within two minutes you show what the clue points to (Hideo Nakata is a master at this)-doesn't translate quite so well to novel form, and there are sections that feel a bit rushed. Of course, this could be an editing problem. Editors are not happy with giving large, expansive canvases to first-time novelists. The seven hundred fifty pages of Perdido Street Station were perfect for Mieville to stretch his wings; the three hundred of King Rat seem a bit cramped. There was more to this tale, I'd warrant, that needlessly hit the cutting room floor.

Still, as fine a novel as any I've read this year, save Perdido Street Station. Mieville may well be the finest new author to come along since Wendy Walker. Get in on the ground floor. **** 

I've just discovered China Mieville and after reading so many rave reviews of The Scar and Perdido Street Station decided to go out and pick up those books. I noticed King Rat and although I had not heard anything about it, I recently read Neverwhere and enjoyed it. Since this book seemed to have a similar theme and setting I took a chance on it.

Great read!

The story was drawing me in, anyway, but once it revealed that it was a dark retelling of a myth, I knew I was hooked. I've always enjoyed stories that either purport to tell you the *real* story behind the myth, or attempt to bring characters from a myth into modern times.

Great characters. The three kings were very well done. The Piper was one of the best villians I've read. Saul seemed to avoid feeling cliche-ish as he "comes of age".

Can't wait to check out more Mieville.

Sorry, folks, but this book does not hold up. It's starts off with a fast pace and characters and a story that just sucks you in. But as more (annoying, pretentious) characters are added...well it goes down hill. This was a chore to finish. The writer is clearly trying to appeal to the hip, cool, gothic youth and is kills what should have been a great book.

For all the many words and apt phrases that Mieville uses, there may be only one word that describes Mieville works: dark. All of his novels to date have this sense of being written at the bottom of a dank, odiferous, and pitch-black well, to where the tiny bits of color that he allows shine through like the sun after a cloudburst.

For this, his first work, he confines himself to the comparatively mundane setting of underground London, underground in both the physical and slang senses of the word, as we follow the story of Saul Garamond, heir apparent to the King Rat of Pied Piper fame. From the sewers to the rifling of garbage heaps for dinner, Mieville delights in offending your hygienic senses while enticing you with glimpses of a musical sub-culture that is just as strange to the average person as the rarified air of sub-atomic research. Bringing the characters of the ancient fairy tale to life is no small task, and Mieville succeeds admirably in the persons of King Rat and the Pied Piper himself. The Pied Piper comes across as a truly sadistic being, as shown by his actions, though at one point he specifically denies that characterization, while King Rat is easily identified with as the whining, downtrodden person who can never quite reach his goal of revenge. Their conflict is very real and very understandable, couched in a thousand years of remembrances of wrongs done, and is an effective mirror of all too many human interactions.

What is not so well crafted is the character of Saul. His reactions to the impossibility of the reality of King Rat, or to the murder of his father, come across as much too accepting, reactions that no normal person would have. But it is even hard to judge just how close to normal Saul is, as his background, his emotional makeup, his normal life are only sketched in before being plunged into the midnight realm of rats and sewers. The emotional impact of this book would have been greatly enhanced had Saul been given much more development prior to the start of the fairy-tale action. The secondary characters are also given short shrift, and as these characters have important roles to play in the final outcome, this once again subtracts from the full power this story could have had.

For a first novel, this is excellent, already showing signs of Mieville's imposing command of the English language to evoke mood and feelings, but the necessary cohesiveness between story and character that would make this a great novel is lacking. Still a very entertaining read, worth the time and effort, and very much recommended before tackling his later works of Perdido Street Station and The Scar, where he shows how much more he can accomplish.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

In "King Rat" China Mieville has created a Pied Piper tale for the 21st century. Using the duality of the ultra-chic yet hyper-primitive culture of the London club scene as his backdrop, and writing with machine-gun pacing, Mieville has created an alternate world that is by turns amusing and terrifying. Unlike his other two novels (which are brilliant in their own right) "King Rat" is raw, there's really no other way to say it, Mieville's words drip and fester like the sewers that are his settings, and his characters resonate with appropriately primal emotion.

It would be extraordinarily difficult to do any more than sketch out the storyline without blowing the plot, but, as I alluded to above, it can safely be said that this is an entirely new and unique take on the Pied Piper. Mieville has transformed the Piper from a jilted, mean-spirited employee, into a force of overawing malevolence and tremendous power. At the same time, as one might deduce from the title, we follow the rats into the sewers and watch as they, and their king, plot revenge for a thousand year old injustice.

As always, Mieville's worldview is always just skewed enough to keep the reader off balance. He takes the reader inside the Piper's song, and reveals that it is a cry out to our most base desires: lust, gluttony and greed. Unlike a devil, which speaks with a deceitful tongue, he pulls back the veil that separates humans from animals, and that instills animals with self-preservation. He promises all that we ever wanted, but would never admit even to ourselves.

Likewise, Mieville's characters are excellent as usual. In particular, Saul, the half-man, half-rat who forms the centerpiece of the story is supremely well conceived and written. His hesitance to turn his back on the human world even as he is lured by the rat world is fascinating, and both real and surreal at the same time. In addition, the supporting cast of characters is also excellent. Saul's human friends exude a pathos, a certain patheticism...weakness that stands in stark contrast to the animal in Saul. Finally, there are several characters that skirt the fantastic while still being utterly grounded. I don't want to ruin any surprises, but it is fair to say that each is superbly realized and effectively captures the essence that Mieville had in mind.

I read both of Mieville's other novels ('Perdido Street Station' and 'The Scar') when they came out, and I enjoyed them both thoroughly. Mieville's command of the language is second to none, and he absolutely revels in the descriptive power of the written word. His characters are always morally ambiguous, and hence completely human. That said, I never completely appreciated these novels until I explored their roots in "King Rat"; where it is raw and jarring, they are contemplative and polished. However, they all share Mieville's boundless imagination and thoughtful writing. "King Rat" is the first stepping-stone in what I expect to be a brilliant career, and as such, it is a superb work in its own right, and even more so, within the context of a greater body of work.