King Rat by China Mieville
Dec. 21st, 2012 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Something is stirring in London’s dark, stamping out its territory in brickdust and blood. Something has murdered Saul’s father, and left Saul to pay for the crime. But a shadow from the urban waste breaks into his prison cell and leads him to freedom. A shadow called King Rat. In the night-land behind London’s façade, in sewers and slums and rotting dead spaces, Saul must learn his true nature. Grotesque murders rock the city like a curse. Mysterious forces prepare for a showdown. With Drum and Bass pounding the backstreets, Saul confronts his bizarre inheritance – in the badlands of South London, in the heart of darkness, at the gathering of the Junglist Massive. Like the DJ says: ‘Time for the Badman.’
When Saul Garamond’s father is murdered, Saul’s the only suspect. Arrested and locked in a cell, his life gets weird when he’s rescued by a mysterious man called King Rat who needs his help to defeat an old enemy. King Rat introduces Saul to London’s grimy underbelly, a world of sewers and vermin where every rubbish bin carries food fit for a king and reveals a secret about who Saul really is …
Saul must come to terms with these revelations just as he begins to realise the threat posed by the Ratcatcher who’s already taken an interest in Saul’s friends, DJ Natasha and Fabian another musician and he has plans that expand far beyond King Rat’s world.
China Mieville’s first novel is a weird, grimy urban update of and riff on The Pied Piper of Hamelin. It’s a highly stylised work that crackles with originality and vision and kept me hooked from beginning to end.
Saul Garamond is an interesting character, a man who’s made little of his life and who feels as if he disappointed his left wing father. His sense of bewilderment at his father’s strange death is the emotional catalyst for his descent into King Rat’s world and I admired the way Mieville shows his emotional and physical transformation, descending into London’s underworld and reduced to eating garbage but at the same time turning it into a matter of triumphant pride.
Although I liked the way Mieville updated the story of the Pied Piper, his Ratcatcher is an underdeveloped character and I would have liked to have learnt more about his motives and where he came from. However his scenes with Natasha have a creepy intensity to them and I loved the way Mieville describes the underground music scene – I’m not a fan of that type of music but I really understood what draws the characters to it and why they love it because of Mieville’s writing.
The central relationship between Saul and King Rat has an interesting dynamic. Rat is venal, self-serving, hated by his own people and utterly desperate and while there are flashes of genuine emotion towards Saul ultimately he’s a character beyond redemption and it’s a relief that Saul recognises that.
Ultimately I thought this was an enjoyable and imaginative novel that takes familiar subjects and does something fresh and original with them. Anyone who enjoys urban fantasy should check it out.
The Verdict:
China Mieville’s first novel is a weird, grimy urban update of and riff on The Pied Piper of Hamelin. It’s a highly stylised work that crackles with originality and vision and kept me hooked from beginning to end. Anyone who enjoys urban fantasy should check it out.
Something is stirring in London’s dark, stamping out its territory in brickdust and blood. Something has murdered Saul’s father, and left Saul to pay for the crime. But a shadow from the urban waste breaks into his prison cell and leads him to freedom. A shadow called King Rat. In the night-land behind London’s façade, in sewers and slums and rotting dead spaces, Saul must learn his true nature. Grotesque murders rock the city like a curse. Mysterious forces prepare for a showdown. With Drum and Bass pounding the backstreets, Saul confronts his bizarre inheritance – in the badlands of South London, in the heart of darkness, at the gathering of the Junglist Massive. Like the DJ says: ‘Time for the Badman.’
When Saul Garamond’s father is murdered, Saul’s the only suspect. Arrested and locked in a cell, his life gets weird when he’s rescued by a mysterious man called King Rat who needs his help to defeat an old enemy. King Rat introduces Saul to London’s grimy underbelly, a world of sewers and vermin where every rubbish bin carries food fit for a king and reveals a secret about who Saul really is …
Saul must come to terms with these revelations just as he begins to realise the threat posed by the Ratcatcher who’s already taken an interest in Saul’s friends, DJ Natasha and Fabian another musician and he has plans that expand far beyond King Rat’s world.
China Mieville’s first novel is a weird, grimy urban update of and riff on The Pied Piper of Hamelin. It’s a highly stylised work that crackles with originality and vision and kept me hooked from beginning to end.
Saul Garamond is an interesting character, a man who’s made little of his life and who feels as if he disappointed his left wing father. His sense of bewilderment at his father’s strange death is the emotional catalyst for his descent into King Rat’s world and I admired the way Mieville shows his emotional and physical transformation, descending into London’s underworld and reduced to eating garbage but at the same time turning it into a matter of triumphant pride.
Although I liked the way Mieville updated the story of the Pied Piper, his Ratcatcher is an underdeveloped character and I would have liked to have learnt more about his motives and where he came from. However his scenes with Natasha have a creepy intensity to them and I loved the way Mieville describes the underground music scene – I’m not a fan of that type of music but I really understood what draws the characters to it and why they love it because of Mieville’s writing.
The central relationship between Saul and King Rat has an interesting dynamic. Rat is venal, self-serving, hated by his own people and utterly desperate and while there are flashes of genuine emotion towards Saul ultimately he’s a character beyond redemption and it’s a relief that Saul recognises that.
Ultimately I thought this was an enjoyable and imaginative novel that takes familiar subjects and does something fresh and original with them. Anyone who enjoys urban fantasy should check it out.
The Verdict:
China Mieville’s first novel is a weird, grimy urban update of and riff on The Pied Piper of Hamelin. It’s a highly stylised work that crackles with originality and vision and kept me hooked from beginning to end. Anyone who enjoys urban fantasy should check it out.
