King Rat
by China Miévillepublished
October 6th 2000
(first published 1998)
by Tor Books
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binding
Paperback, 320 pages
literary awards
Bram Stoker First Novel nominee (2000)
isbn
0312890729
(isbn13: 9780312890728)
description
Saul Garamond returns from a journey in late evening and sneaks into his bedroom to avoid a confrontation with his estranged father. He awakes to the ...more
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Read in September, 2008
I tried to keep in mind when picking up King Rat that it was China Miéville's debut novel and the chances of it being on par or better than PSS weren't high. With that in mind, I wasn't too disappointed.
Saul Garamond's come home to London after a camping excursion and finds the place quiet, empty of its usual domestic element. Instead of bothering about his father's silence, Saul succumbs to exhaustion and is awakened to a confusion of police officers, caution tape and a broken win...more
Saul Garamond's come home to London after a camping excursion and finds the place quiet, empty of its usual domestic element. Instead of bothering about his father's silence, Saul succumbs to exhaustion and is awakened to a confusion of police officers, caution tape and a broken win...more
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Read in April, 2008
OK, I actually finished this one last week sometime, but I've been sick ever since and having trouble coming up with the energy to write anything. So this may not be as accurate as it would be had I written it the day I finished reading "King Rat", but I'll do my best.
This book is about a twenty-something boy in London who still lives with his father and is resisting the process of growing up, spending his time and money hanging out in the drum n' bass scene, hitting up dance parties...more
This book is about a twenty-something boy in London who still lives with his father and is resisting the process of growing up, spending his time and money hanging out in the drum n' bass scene, hitting up dance parties...more
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Read in October, 2003
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 sixt...more
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 sixt...more
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Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
dancehall daemons
Urban landscape as created environment, with a unique history, character, and potential from block to block. In this, Mieville's first book, he already demonstrates an elaborate sense of a layered setting's manifold consequences on dramatic tensions, as he variously turns his hometown (London) into an ally and a nemesis.
These contradictions of context and subtext recur (in more nuanced form) in his later books, which also develop his interests in myth, collective memory, and movements to re...more
These contradictions of context and subtext recur (in more nuanced form) in his later books, which also develop his interests in myth, collective memory, and movements to re...more
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Read in August, 2007
The first time I read King Rat, I was stuck at an airport overnight, waiting for an early flight. I don't know why, but I assumed that airports were 24/7 sorts of things, I had no idea that the whole place would shut down, that flights stopped, and that the daily bustle would dissipate, leaving a strange ghost town populated by a handful of the shambling undead, shuffling between the only open coffee shop at one end of the terminal, and the only open seating area at the other. It's a strange atm...more
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Really good--but not nearly as really good as Perdido Street Station or The Scar. Interesting urban fantasy twist on an old fairy tale, a few well-thought-out main characters, the most disturbing execution scene in my recent memory, deft avoidance of the tired cliches and hackneyed moralism of the genre--but definitely a first novel. Some plot twists lumbering toward you from a great distance, and some characters get a lot of page time but never develop or even seem to do anything. The weird thi...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommended to owl_henry by:
Frank
Here's the deal with King Rat: Neil Gaiman and China Mieville were sitting at a pub one cold 1998 evening, right? And China makes some wager with Neil, a wager that Neil ultimately loses. (Let's say China bets him he can't write a better comic book series than The Sandman.) So for losing, Neil has to write a book for China to sell under Mieville's name. Neil writes King Rat. It's got some typical Gaimanisms: a trip through a fantastical underworld two steps removed from the normal ...more
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Read in July, 2008
recommends it for:
fans of dark fantasy
China Mieville's first novel is typical of the dark, urban fantasy that he's become known for. But this one had a special intensity that amazed me.
I've always thought that villains are far more interesting than heroes. In King Rat, the villain was heinous and irredeemably evil in a peculiarly personal way. The story builds up slowly, teasing you with one face of evil and then another. And when the full scope of the drama is finally unveile...more
I've always thought that villains are far more interesting than heroes. In King Rat, the villain was heinous and irredeemably evil in a peculiarly personal way. The story builds up slowly, teasing you with one face of evil and then another. And when the full scope of the drama is finally unveile...more
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Read in August, 2008
China Miéville really loves writing about cities, doesn't he? And not pretty, fantasy cities, but "real" cities, gritty cities, the underside of cities. It's interesting. Again, this book reminded me of Gaiman's Neverwhere more than a little, while also managing to be different. The weaving in of Drum and Bass music as part of the city was interesting and different, and the Pied Piper was interesting. The book even surprised me a little -- when I found out about Saul's real father.
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Read in April, 2008
I recently learned this falls under the subgenre of Urban Fantasy. I was introduced when that blog linked to a review of mine...so that's the kind of fantasy I gravitate toward.
I also gravitate toward views other than mine, and this one coming out of London does not disappoint.
A young man has a fight with his father, nothing unusual there. Then his father is murdered, and the young man is locked up as the numbe...more
I also gravitate toward views other than mine, and this one coming out of London does not disappoint.
A young man has a fight with his father, nothing unusual there. Then his father is murdered, and the young man is locked up as the numbe...more
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Read in July, 2007
I must say, I really enjoyed this book! It was somewhat slow to start, but just over halfway through, I really got caught up in the story and just flew through the sewers and over the rooftops of London with the rats, the spiders and the birds. I know, it sounds a bit odd, and it is, but in a good way. There's some of just about everything that makes for a good story here: love, hate, greed, sacrifice, fear, bravery, defeat and triumph. And the more I think about it, the more the slow pace at th...more
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Read in February, 2002
Inspired by the Pied Piper of Hamelin fairy tale, this is gritty, grungy urban dark fantasy. Miéville's evocation of the world underneath the streets of London is superb, every bit as vivid as you'd expect from the author of "Perdido Street Station". It's a putrid, pungent world full of bizarre characters, a world that brings to mind Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast and Dickens' Oliver Twist. King Rat himself, Loplop the bird king and Anansi the spider king are particularly rich and exot...more
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Read in August, 2008
recommended to Navera by:
Noah s
A feverish ride through underground and sideways London, mixed with drum n bass and medieval legend. I thought this was a good first book not as deep or compassionate as his Bas-Lag books. The main character was a little too flat and his interactions with his uncle didn't make emotional sense at times. The musical subplot felt a little tacked although it fit in well with the villain's goals. Gruesome and fast-paced, all-in-all, a solid thriller. King Rat also doesn't fit with ...more
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China Mieville is like a bag of potato chips. You can't eat just one. You rip through one in one sitting. And, you feel slightly nauseous afterwards.
I came across Mieville in a newspaper article about young Socialist Brits making it into Parliament. I googled him and saw that he did his PhD in political economy and is a foxy radical dude. And, he writes sci fi!
I ordered a bunch of his books used from abebooks and was immersed for weeks in living vampires, pied piper of rats, and f...more
I came across Mieville in a newspaper article about young Socialist Brits making it into Parliament. I googled him and saw that he did his PhD in political economy and is a foxy radical dude. And, he writes sci fi!
I ordered a bunch of his books used from abebooks and was immersed for weeks in living vampires, pied piper of rats, and f...more
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This retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamlin has the the dank smells, the damp, creeping shadows, the awfulness of truth mixed into a weirdly familiar, musically underlined London.
To tell you more would be to ruin the book, really. It is, like Mieville's work usually is, an experience, not a reading. Fall in and go under. Waterwings won't help. Not for the squeamish or those who like their heroes clean and obvious.
To tell you more would be to ruin the book, really. It is, like Mieville's work usually is, an experience, not a reading. Fall in and go under. Waterwings won't help. Not for the squeamish or those who like their heroes clean and obvious.
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Read in July, 2008
recommends it for:
People who like urban fantasy
A little fantasy, a little horror. Mieville has some excellent bits here -- he works hard to evoke his setting with all five senses, which makes sense, given the characters' natures, and the setting is very gritty without being excessively morbid. The supporting cast is under-developed, however, and the plot never exactly gels. It moves along, and there are mysteries, revelations, and a resolution, but it is pretty arbitrary. The book is a lot like a more focused and less sprawling version of &l...more
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recommends it for:
fans of dark fiction
This book blindsided me mainly due to the fact I had read Perdido Street Station and The Scar before I cracked it. I was expecting the Mieville voice I had grown accustomed to. What I encountered was more raw and less focused... in a good way.
Muscular and well-structured prose provide the groundwork for this fairy tale turned urban. Miéville's sign...more
Muscular and well-structured prose provide the groundwork for this fairy tale turned urban. Miéville's sign...more
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Read in March, 2001
" He realized that he had defeated the city. He crouched on the roof (of what building he did not know) and looked out over London at an angle from which the city was never meant to be seen. He had defeated the conspiracy of architecture, the tyranny by which the buildings that women and men had built had taken control of them, circumstribed their relations, confined their movements."
"Saul kicked carelessly off and stalked across the roofs and walls of London."
"Saul kicked carelessly off and stalked across the roofs and walls of London."
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in January, 2006
He is a master at bringing the dark and dungy alive in all its dull colors, putrid smells and pounding sound.
This is a convincing parable of the Pied Piper story. He manages to weave it together into the present world of Drum and Bass, London Underground and the Scotland Yard.
In his first book we see just how innately gifted China Mieville is painting a unique world in some of the most passionate and haunting prose.
This is a convincing parable of the Pied Piper story. He manages to weave it together into the present world of Drum and Bass, London Underground and the Scotland Yard.
In his first book we see just how innately gifted China Mieville is painting a unique world in some of the most passionate and haunting prose.
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Read in January, 2008
As a number of reviewers had pointed out, if I had read this before I read Perdido Street Station or The Scar I may or may not have decided to read all of Meiville's books. However, he brings a dark and violent London to life and although there is more than a small whiff of Neil Gaiman here, you can see a bit of the directions he would eventually go with New Crobuzon series. An enjoyable read, but not his best work.
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