Post by Pale on Aug 25, 2003 10:11:50 GMT -5
First published at the complete Review.
The complete review's Review:
King Rat is a curious London-fantasy and Pied Piper story. Saul Garamond returns home and is awakened the next day by the police at his door. His father has been thrown to his death through the apartment window, and Saul is the prime suspect.
Saul is distraught and baffled. Mieville nicely evokes the relationship Saul had with his father: a close one in his childhood days, his mother having died during childbirth, the father paying great attention to explaining the world to the boy (and doing so from a generally Marxist position), but eventually a shift towards mutual incomprehension keeping them further apart. But there is no other family, just a few friends Saul has, and the loss of his father is in a number of ways a crippling one.
Saul is rescued from the clutches of the police by an unlikely creature -- King Rat himself. King Rat is, indeed, a rat. And he has some news for Saul: Saul isn't entirely human either:
"You're a special boy, Saul, got special blood in your veins, and there's one in the city who'd like to see it spilled."
Among the best parts of the novel are Mieville's descriptions of King Rat introducing Saul to his world and Saul discovering his own abilities and identity.
These rat-beings are difficult to portray convincingly, but MiƩville does, and from the food and smells to the ability of Saul and King Rat to appear near-invisible or to rush through sewers and up buildings Mieville has done something very impressive here. (It may not be quite to everyone's taste -- MiƩville describes the smells and tastes very vividly -- but the book is worth reading for these parts alone.)
Another creature lurks out there too, a Pied Piper with plans of his own. Saul is a particular danger to him, because, being only half-rat, he can't be swayed by the music as the pure rodents are, and so the Pied Piper wants to kill him. His plan involves a friend of Saul's, a musician who can be tricked into helping the Piper.
King Rat also has his reasons for helping (and manipulating) Saul, but Saul begins to understand who the enemy is and how he might be conquered, leading to the predictable final showdown.
The books gets very messy in its chases and a culminating Pied Piper carnage scene, and Mieville can't resolve it entirely satisfactorily (he calls the coppers and suggests, among other things: "say it was a performance piece that went horribly wrong"), but he also adds a nice twist to finish things off.
King Rat is also a London novel. As King Rat explains:
"This is the city where I live. It shares all the points of yours and theirs, but none of its properties."
Mieville nicely invents this alter-world -- indeed, the novel is filled with inspired invention. With a great deal of dialogue and short (often one-sentence) paragraphs (and the use of of italics for emphasis ("hear the trains growling ?")) Mieville moves things along quickly -- and a bit obviously. He also succumbs to the seductions of language in ways that don't always further what he is trying to do, in descriptions such as:
The motion seemed to take a long time, the door fighting its way through air suddenly glutinous. The complaints of the hinges, emaciated with malaise, stretched out long after the door had stopped moving.
It's a novel of trial-and-error: a fairly simple story (which he's not entirely comfortable with, leading to some creaky spots and characters), some marvelous ideas (what Saul is, for example), and some flair for writing (which gets a bit out of hand here), all mixed together, splattered across the pages. There's certainly a lot here that is worthwhile, and parts -- especially before the final conflict truly takes shape -- are very impressive.
From twbooks.co.uk
King Rat
Like the DJ says: ' Time for the Badman.'
Something is stirring in London's darkness, stamping out its territory in the brickdust and blood. Something has murdered Saul's father, and has left Saul to pay for the crime. But a shadow from the urban wasteland breaks into his prison cell and leads him to freedom. A shadow called King Rat.
In the night-land behind London's facade, 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 - the badlands of South London.
In the heart of darkness, at the gathering of the Junglist Massive.
Based around the dance-music subculture of Drum and Base, this brilliant first novel of urban gothic introduces the outstanding new talent of China Mieville. Disturbing and different, this debut novel is ingenious and punchy. It is a violent but intelligent story that can be read on many levels - from the tops of city skyscrapers to the deepest, dank sewers ...
'China Mieville's King Rat is an absolutely brilliant and, imaginative debut novel.' The Bookseller
'A brilliant debut novel of urban gothic' Publishing News
The complete review's Review:
King Rat is a curious London-fantasy and Pied Piper story. Saul Garamond returns home and is awakened the next day by the police at his door. His father has been thrown to his death through the apartment window, and Saul is the prime suspect.
Saul is distraught and baffled. Mieville nicely evokes the relationship Saul had with his father: a close one in his childhood days, his mother having died during childbirth, the father paying great attention to explaining the world to the boy (and doing so from a generally Marxist position), but eventually a shift towards mutual incomprehension keeping them further apart. But there is no other family, just a few friends Saul has, and the loss of his father is in a number of ways a crippling one.
Saul is rescued from the clutches of the police by an unlikely creature -- King Rat himself. King Rat is, indeed, a rat. And he has some news for Saul: Saul isn't entirely human either:
"You're a special boy, Saul, got special blood in your veins, and there's one in the city who'd like to see it spilled."
Among the best parts of the novel are Mieville's descriptions of King Rat introducing Saul to his world and Saul discovering his own abilities and identity.
These rat-beings are difficult to portray convincingly, but MiƩville does, and from the food and smells to the ability of Saul and King Rat to appear near-invisible or to rush through sewers and up buildings Mieville has done something very impressive here. (It may not be quite to everyone's taste -- MiƩville describes the smells and tastes very vividly -- but the book is worth reading for these parts alone.)
Another creature lurks out there too, a Pied Piper with plans of his own. Saul is a particular danger to him, because, being only half-rat, he can't be swayed by the music as the pure rodents are, and so the Pied Piper wants to kill him. His plan involves a friend of Saul's, a musician who can be tricked into helping the Piper.
King Rat also has his reasons for helping (and manipulating) Saul, but Saul begins to understand who the enemy is and how he might be conquered, leading to the predictable final showdown.
The books gets very messy in its chases and a culminating Pied Piper carnage scene, and Mieville can't resolve it entirely satisfactorily (he calls the coppers and suggests, among other things: "say it was a performance piece that went horribly wrong"), but he also adds a nice twist to finish things off.
King Rat is also a London novel. As King Rat explains:
"This is the city where I live. It shares all the points of yours and theirs, but none of its properties."
Mieville nicely invents this alter-world -- indeed, the novel is filled with inspired invention. With a great deal of dialogue and short (often one-sentence) paragraphs (and the use of of italics for emphasis ("hear the trains growling ?")) Mieville moves things along quickly -- and a bit obviously. He also succumbs to the seductions of language in ways that don't always further what he is trying to do, in descriptions such as:
The motion seemed to take a long time, the door fighting its way through air suddenly glutinous. The complaints of the hinges, emaciated with malaise, stretched out long after the door had stopped moving.
It's a novel of trial-and-error: a fairly simple story (which he's not entirely comfortable with, leading to some creaky spots and characters), some marvelous ideas (what Saul is, for example), and some flair for writing (which gets a bit out of hand here), all mixed together, splattered across the pages. There's certainly a lot here that is worthwhile, and parts -- especially before the final conflict truly takes shape -- are very impressive.
From twbooks.co.uk
King Rat
Like the DJ says: ' Time for the Badman.'
Something is stirring in London's darkness, stamping out its territory in the brickdust and blood. Something has murdered Saul's father, and has left Saul to pay for the crime. But a shadow from the urban wasteland breaks into his prison cell and leads him to freedom. A shadow called King Rat.
In the night-land behind London's facade, 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 - the badlands of South London.
In the heart of darkness, at the gathering of the Junglist Massive.
Based around the dance-music subculture of Drum and Base, this brilliant first novel of urban gothic introduces the outstanding new talent of China Mieville. Disturbing and different, this debut novel is ingenious and punchy. It is a violent but intelligent story that can be read on many levels - from the tops of city skyscrapers to the deepest, dank sewers ...
'China Mieville's King Rat is an absolutely brilliant and, imaginative debut novel.' The Bookseller
'A brilliant debut novel of urban gothic' Publishing News