owl_henry's review of King Rat
King Rat by China Miéville
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 version of London, characters lifted from mythology and given a gritty present-day reality, and violent turns that are both threatening and strangely out-of-place. But Neil knows he needs to at least try to hide the fact that he's ghostwritten this one, so he makes the characters lackluster, the plot twists obvious, and the spelling- strangely- erratic. Gaiman fans should go read...well, anything by Gaiman. I've personally only read Looking For Jake by Mieville, a collection of his...more
comments (showing 1-1 of 1)
newest »
date
