King Rat [Hardcover]

China Mieville (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1999

China Mieville's exciting debut novel, King Rat, mixes a young man's search for identity with a pulse-pounding story of revenge and madness. When Saul Garamond's father is viciously murdered by an intruder, Saul falls into the care of King Rat, and into the subterranean world he inhabits. A world of rats, slime, and garbage, a world Saul was born to rule. But King Rat has plans for Saul, his special weapon in a war that goes back to a town called Hamelin....

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 intrusion of police and the news that his father has been murdered and he is the number-one suspect. Forgotten in a jail cell, he is freed by a peculiar, stinking, and impossibly strong stranger--only to find rescue may be worse than imprisonment. The plot moves through subterranean and rooftop London quick as a techno beat, as Saul discovers his curious heritage and finds himself marked for death in an age-old secret war among frightful inhuman powers.

China Miéville's urban fantasy novel, King Rat, is an impressive, even daring, debut. It is a Lost Prince story that avoids both black-and-white morality and the standard fantasy-novel adoration of royalty. Furthermore, it is inspired by the unlikeliest of sources, the Rat King legend and the Pied Piper of Hamelin fairy tale. Finally, King Rat, powered and propelled by the rhythms of jungle/drum-'n'-bass music, is a fantasy novel set in the 1990s that genuinely captures the 1990s. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly

In the past decade, contemporary renderings of traditional fairy tales have become a staple of fantasy fiction. This flashy riff on the Pied Piper theme marks a notable extension of the trend and an auspicious debut for its author. Saul Garamond is a restless young Londoner, aimlessly adrift, when he is wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his father. Saul is snatched from the authorities by a mysterious savior named King Rat, who claims to be both the deposed leader of the rodent army driven out of Hamelin 700 years before and Saul's real father. Raised as a human, Saul has much to unlearn before King can teach him to become a worthy opponent of the Rat Catcher, who framed Saul for murder and is still pursuing King. Meanwhile, the Rat Catcher forces his friendship on Saul's composer friend, Natasha, by posing as a flautist who hopes to work his melodies into her "drum 'n' bass" dance music and turn London's hip-hop underground into his unwitting stormtroopers. Though the plot is predictable and Saul's efforts to get in touch with his inner rat are clearly patterned on the Star Wars school of messiah-making, Mi?ville pulls the reader into the story through the kinetic energy of his prose. From the novel's opening image ("The trains that enter London arrive like ships sailing across the roofs"), the narrative crackles with a mesmerizing melange of impressionistic description and street slang that powerfully limns the squalid London cityscape. Paced at the rhythm of the Jungle music it evokes, this dark urban fantasy proves nearly as irresistible as the Pied Piper's tunes.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 318 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st Tor ed edition (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312890737
• ISBN-13: 978-0312890735
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,708,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

China Miéville is the author of King Rat; Perdido Street Station, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award; The Scar, winner of the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award; Iron Council, winner of the Locus Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Looking for Jake, a collection of short stories; and Un Lun Dun, his New York Times bestselling book for younger readers. He lives and works in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Modest Compared To "Perdido Street Station", April 6, 2001

By 

Elyon (Mesilla, New Mexico) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: King Rat (Paperback)

After reading Mieville's phenomenal "Perdido Street Station" I rushed right out to buy his first novel, "King Rat." I could have delayed my haste. While also stylish and distinctively written, this dark, urban fantasy, compared to his second work, is a rough cut, much more loosely written and barely approaching the wonders or skill of writing present in the following novel. While I may be grudging of comment by comparison, "Perdido Street Station" is a masterpiece of speculative fiction, whereas "King Rat" reads as a someways good but fledgling effort. In many respects there is little to distinguish it from early Charles De Lint, though Mieville comes across here as more hip and involved with the music he provides as an underlying theme.

While certainly a departure from the ordinary fantasy, written with a degree of verve and suspense, drawing, as another reviewer has stated, upon the folklore of the Piper of Hamelin and tales of the rat king, placed within the context of modern day London and its vibrant, in part underground music scene, this tale lacks both the riveting use of language and the vivid world creation found in the author's second novel. Unlike "Perdido Street Station," as others have additionally noted, here the characters remain relatively flat, perhaps in part intentionally reflecting the cartoon characters referenced in the novel. As earlier stated, more loosely written and evolved, the cord of metaphor underlying the basic storyline never seems as fully integrated or realized as in Mieville's second novel, unable to entirely lift the tale above the surface of its active, running narrative, or significantly set it apart from other and equally skilled writers of urban fantasy.

Though I suspect fans of urban fantasy may find my observations too harsh, or critical by comparison, it is doubtful had I even not read "Perdido Street Station" that I would have been enamoured with this novel. Good but far from great, this is a very respectable first effort that should be applauded for what it attempts, even if not entirely successful. One catches glimpses of the brilliance later displayed and captured fully in "Perdido Street Station," as well as the author's desire to push speculative fiction beyond its normal boundaries. Nonetheless, I can only give this effort at best three and a half stars.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elemental-ary, my dear Watson, April 7, 2002

By 

socrates17 "socrates17" (New Jersey/Tanelorn 2008/9) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: King Rat (Paperback)

One theme amongst the other reviews for this marvelous book is to compare it to the author's next, Perdido Street Station which most people seem to have read first.

I did not. (In fact I have not yet read Perdido, having recently and reluctantly cancelled virtually all of my magazines due to the sad realization that there was not enough time in my life to keep up with both magazines and books.)

Nevertheless, I believe I would still have valued King Rat as highly as I do now.

King Rat layers levels of reality the way the physical geography of the book is layered with the surface of London, the downbelow, and occsionally the air when Loplop, King of the Birds is aloft.

The portrayal of the Techno - Drum and Bass milieu is perfectly realized as if by someone who must have lived it. The realm(s) of the three Kings, whom I cannot help but identify with Elementals, is both physically well drawn and (intentionally or not) an allegory for the sub-conscious.

The characters are exceptionally well portrayed. The reinvention of the Pied Piper is so audacious and effective that every page where he appears is haunted by a different Kind of Music entirely.

When I finished it, although probably not even the author would agree with the connection, there was nothing for it but to watch my DVD of The Sweet Hereafter, a different sort of work entirely, but one which also uses the Pied Piper as a significant metaphor.

Buy it. Read it. Be moved by it.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strange Fantasy in the Real World, August 10, 2000

By 

B. Jonsson "Literate Warlock" (falun, dalarna sweden) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: King Rat (Hardcover)

Fantasy books are not scarce these days, when everyone wants to write one, and publishers print whatever comes in this genre.

King Rat is different, however, not only by it's uncommon method of having the secondary world within the real world, but also by it's uncanny way of getting to you... This is a book that combines todays music with old folklore and mixes them with almost mythical,yet real characters to form a new genre in itself.

The main character is at first just another bloke that life has given the finger, but he grows on you and becomes real, his fears tangible, his experiences real.

The story is a common theme: the showdown between Good and Evil, but told in a new way, where the good forces aren't wholly good and the evil not only bad.

Miéville has a way with the language that will make him a very good writer, a mix between the daily speech and the descriptive Britishness only a few could muster.

Fantasy fan or not- read the book!