mass market paperback, 352 pages
Published by Tor Books.
A London man is enrolled by the King of Rats to assassinate the Pied Piper of Hamelin who dethroned him. The man is Saul, whose rat mother joined humanity, making him immune to the piper's call. In his rat persona Saul eats garbage and climbs walls.
A darker, more modern sequel to a classic fairytale, but with drum n' bass, set in the late 90s in London. I'm less familiar with London, but loved all the lovely descriptions of its personality and architecture. It has its own personality. All the characters are fleshed out, flawed, and feel like they have their own stories which would easily fill a few other novels.
Very good. China leads on a drum and bass exploration of the London underworld. If you've read Neverwhere, you'll get strong echoes of it throughout, but this is darker and makes some hard turns from the story you might expect.
It's also more obvious that this is early writing from China - there are some unfired checkov's guns, some cheats at the very end, but overall it's a great book.
King Rat is a contemporary urban Fantasy which sort of sees the Pied Piper of Hamelin story from the viewpoint of the rats. It also brings in Drum and Bass music and the culture based on it. Miéville was interviewed on GLR on 24 March 2000 (about his new novel Perdido Street Station); the interviewer, Robert Elms (who should really know better) admitted at first off that he disses Science Fiction. Miéville: "that's because people's perception of Science Fiction is via tacky media SF and not literature, besides, my books aren't Science Fiction, they're Fantasy". Elms: "my perception of Fantasy is crap big-trilogy Fantasy." Miéville: "that's a bit like saying you hate romance because of Mills and Boon, and ignoring that Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are romances." He describes what he writes as Weird Fiction, suggests Mervyn Peake as a main influence and true enough, the one reference …
King Rat is a contemporary urban Fantasy which sort of sees the Pied Piper of Hamelin story from the viewpoint of the rats. It also brings in Drum and Bass music and the culture based on it. Miéville was interviewed on GLR on 24 March 2000 (about his new novel Perdido Street Station); the interviewer, Robert Elms (who should really know better) admitted at first off that he disses Science Fiction. Miéville: "that's because people's perception of Science Fiction is via tacky media SF and not literature, besides, my books aren't Science Fiction, they're Fantasy". Elms: "my perception of Fantasy is crap big-trilogy Fantasy." Miéville: "that's a bit like saying you hate romance because of Mills and Boon, and ignoring that Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are romances." He describes what he writes as Weird Fiction, suggests Mervyn Peake as a main influence and true enough, the one reference to Gormenghast in King Rat suggests Gormenghast as a huge structure whose edges are indeterminate; far more what Peake actually described than the Gothic pile which may be the popular perception. [later note - 'structure whose edges are indeterminate' is a recurring theme in my own work. Wonder where I got it from?]
