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Sci-Fi Books Media Book Reviews

King Rat 120

Posted by timothy from the rattus-rex dept.
CrankyFool writes "Never having been a huge graphic book fan, I didn't discover Neil Gaiman until my appreciation for Pratchett led me to find Good Omens. Years after Good Omens I discovered urban fantasy as done by Gaiman and hungrily devoured American Gods and Neverwhere. After raving about Neverwhere, someone recommended King Rat by China Mieville (rather than James Clavell, who wrote a very, very different King Rat ) to me. Well, I'll give any author a chance, especially after they'd been reviewed so positively on Slashdot (see an earlier review of Perdido Street Station)." Read on for the rest of CrankyFool's review.
King Rat
author China Mieville
pages 320
publisher Tor Books
rating 8
reviewer CrankyFool
ISBN 0312890729
summary Saul Garamond is blamed for his father's death, broken out of jail, and finds out his the half-human heir to the rat kingdom and a thousand-year-old conflict. Things go downhill from there.

King Rat is incredibly similar to Gaiman's American Gods and Neverwhere -- I've purposefully not looked into the chronology of publication so I don't want to assert who was influenced by whom, but some significant elements of Neverwhere -- London as a setting, the critical presence of rats, a malevolent, almost-unkillable foe -- and American Gods -- a protagonist who loses someone dear to him very early in the work (Shadow loses his wife in AG, while Saul loses his father), and who struggles through a new understanding of his role in the world, a new appreciation for the fact he was born for a specific destiny, and a rebellion against his father. Hell, one character actually appears in both American Gods and King Rat.

There's probably a very strong correlation between people who liked American Gods and Neverwhere and people who'll like King Rat. At the same time, King Rat's tone is incredibly different -- it's not a derivative of Gaiman's work as much as it is a close family relation. It's almost totally bereft of humor, unlike Neverwhere, and not quite as awash in a palpable sense of loss as American Gods (especially given Shadow's ongoing relationship with his wife). Unlike the other two books, I found this one a little slow to get into, reading five pages here, ten pages there, until it finally hooked me.

King Rat's story revolves around Saul Garamond, who comes home one night to find that someone has killed his estranged father -- and the police think it's him. Garamond is broken out of prison by the title furtive character, who lost his dominion over the rats in the Hamlin catastrophe, and who introduces himself as Saul's uncle. So yes, the protagonist of King Rat is, in fact, Prince Rat (who is half man and half rat).

The rest of the book is the detailing of the conflict between the Rat, Bird, and Spider people and the pied piper of Hamlin who, in fact, turns out to be quite evil and fond of killing things.

Music is at the core of King Rat, from the basic most powerful talent of the nemesis, to the particular defenses of Saul (since he's a halfling, neither human-snaring music nor rat-snaring music alone could get him), to the interweaving of Saul's story with that of Natasha, a friend of his and a jungle-music DJ. Parts of the book, discussing the music arrangement and the role of bass in the actual communication of emotion to an audience, felt like they might be lost a little on a reader who hasn't been awash in that rhythm in a club. Thankfully for the vast majority of slashdotters, that's not a huge part of the book and even if you've never gone clubbing, held a rhythm, or danced your ass off, you're not likely to be alienated by it.

Mieville decided to end the book and the conflict in a way that felt more ambiguous than it could have been. While I applaud any author who doesn't bow and scrape to the convention that if you have a battle between good and evil, evil must be completely vanquished by the end of the work, I couldn't help feel that Mieville ended the book in such a way at least partially so a sequel could be written, featuring largely the same characters. It left me uneasy and on the verge of feeling a little cheated.

So that's the downside. On the upside, I found Saul's characterization engaging, interesting, and real. Saul is not as good of a man as we all would like to be, but he's probably as good as most of us get to be. Especially in the beginning, he's pretty wretchedly whiny. He's not exceedingly brave, or truthful, or kind. He's just ... a guy, with some special powers due to his parentage, thrust into a reality that is wildly different from his own, and he does his best to adapt to it. Saul's friends, Natasha Fabian and Kay, can't be drawn with as fine of a stroke because the book isn't about them, but they're still interesting and nuanced. Pete, the piper of Hamlin, is rather less complex. He's evil. He's strong. He is, in Jules' immortal terms, a bad motherfucker. With a flute.

Darn decent book, I'd say. If you liked Neverwhere (and can stand urban fantasy that isn't funny), or American Gods (and can stand urban fantasy that isn't set in the U.S.), you owe it to yourself to check it out.

China Mieville's official website was down last time I checked -- you may have more luck finding stuff about him at his unofficial home page.

You can purchase King Rat from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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King Rat

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  • Previously Read Books? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:20PM (#8259382)
    For your next review, perhaps you could start out by saying what the book's about, instead of referring/comparing to other books?
    • Why should he? A review isn't about retelling a story, it's about helping other people decide whether or not they want to read it. By immediately awknowledging the similarity of the work to works by other popular authors, you can pique the interest of people who are interested in those authors.

      Shit, I wouldn't have cared if I hadn't seen Gaiman's name. I just read (and liked, despite myself) American Gods and was hoping to find something new with the same epic feel and mythological flavor, only with a d

      • Why should he?

        People read reviews by critics because they are interested in their opinion. Most professional reviews are paid advertisements. Amateur ones are shrines. Why should I care what books CrankyFool thinks this book is like if he can't even provide a lucid summary of the book's "hook" in a compelling way to make me interested both reading his review and possibly obtaining the book to read?

        CrankyFool's review reads like a high school book report, which it probably is. CrankyFool could have sav

      • Re:Previously Read Books? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by lysium ( 644252 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @02:15PM (#8260517)
        I just read (and liked, despite myself) American Gods and was hoping to find something new with the same epic feel and mythological flavor, only with a denoument that wasn't as glib...

        He bit off more than he could chew. It's very hard to fit such an exestential concept into a story, without the climax (and denoument) being embarassing. Think of the movie Contact, and then consider how much better it would have been with the 'alien encounter' climax written out.

        Gaiman is an excellent writer; he just needs a little mental distance from graphic novel plotting, IMHO.

        I suggest Gene Wolfe. He creates a tone and atmosphere similar to Gaiman's, with more distance from the present world. Wolfe is very skillful with the written word. The vocabulary and descriptions are amazing.

        ===========

        • Re:Previously Read Books? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by dasmegabyte ( 267018 ) <das@OHNOWHATSTHISdasmegabyte.org> on Thursday February 12, 2004 @02:34PM (#8260704) Homepage Journal
          I'd rather think of the book Contact, which had the alien encounter written in but a much more satisfying ending that made you realize just how optimistic Sagan was.

          Worst thing about the film adaptation was that it turned Sagan's theme upside down. In the book, a level headed scientist who bucks religious nonsense and uses human creativity to discover the underlying truth of the universe and its creation. In the film, a level headed scientist is COURTED by religious nonsense and in the end discovers that science isn't everything. In short, they de-Sagan'd it. The outrage is indescribable...should have sent a poet...
          • You know, I don't think the movie entirely twisted Sagan's point. After all, in more than a few of his books, he relates joy of, and hope in, science as the religion of the future. Sagan's optimism is nothing more than a very strong belief in the 'rightness' of science, is it not?

            Also, at the end, it was not science itself that was flawed, but the people in charge of it. That kind of reminds me of why religions suck in the real world...and perhaps that was the point.

            But yes, the book was many times be

        • I thought American Gods was so-so, and Neverwhere was one of the most awful books I have ever read. If there was ever a book that relied on stereotypes (not archetypes) as building blocks, this was it. "Her skin was the colour of burnt caramel, and her smile would have stopped revolutions." "Hunter raised a perfect eyebrow." And let's not forget: She folded her arms beneath her breasts, planted her legs a little apart, and looked for all the underworld like a statue of a woman not going anywhere, cast in br
      • I liked American Gods better when it was called The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul by Douglas Adams of the Hitchhiker's Guide fame. It was more cohesive, funnier, and kept my attention by keeping the story moving. American Gods seemed like a poorly written attempt to rewrite the story by adding some poorly written sex subtext. Of course, it also has American in the title, so it is more patriotic for us Americans. LDTTotS was written way back in 1988; Gaiman must feel that everybody would have forgotten
        • Congratulations. You are the very first person in the universe to describe The Long Dark Tea-Time Of the Soul as "cohesive."

          Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was a recycle of an half-filmed Dr. Who episode, which shoe-horned in a detective character who was more or less the same archetype as FBI Special Agent Cooper from David Lynch's Twin Peaks.

          The Long Dark Tea-Time Of the Soul was an even more confused, muddled, and cobbled-together sequel to that book. I'm pretty sure he was using the Dirk G

        • First, American Gods is absolutely nothing like Adams' novel. Not only is the tone different, the mechanics of the dieries are different (and quite original). I liked both, but wheras Adams is going for a laugh, Gaiman's going for an exciting story. Adams' plot was a vehicle for his charismatic one liners, and that's why Gaiman did not use it in his bibliography -- as a source of information pertaining to his work, it would have been useless.

          Gaiman really steals more from Pratchett than he does from Ada
          • It's written by a pessimistic brit and the essential subtext is that we don't believe in things because we have no ties to the earth and thus no traditions.

            Which shows that a lot of "Brits" [sic] don't really understand America at all. None of us are tied to a particular piece of dirt, that's true. Even for somebody like me, who has family ties going back to the colonial days, we are only talking about roughly 400 years of history here, which is nothing compared to the age of many important European citi

            • For the record: Gaiman is a bit pessimistic, but the soul of American God is exactly what you're talking about. You should really read it. I guarantee that, even if you don't agree, it'll make you think.

              As for Sandman living up to the hype...it does, at times. I'm recollecting the whole 75 issue run mostly as a matter of principle, and there's some brilliance there, but there's also a lot of Vertigo Comics masturbation. Vertigo was really the first attempt by a major publisher to reach a new, artsier a
        • How can you go from Terry Pratchett to Neil Gaiman?

          By knowing that they collaborated on the novel Good Omens, I expect.

  • Authors overusing themes... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by freerecords ( 750663 ) <slashdot.freerecords@org> on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:24PM (#8259416) Homepage Journal
    .. has been a long standing problem with everyone. This book is not unique in the way that the outline is so cliche, but it still underlines a big point. It has been extremely rare to find books with completely original themes recently, you seem to have the framed school, the lawyer school, etc. What has happened to the Chuck Palahniuks of the world? Even his books have become too samy samy.. is it me, or do we need another Wodehouse to rise up?
    • It has been said that no author really has more than one idea, and merely spends his life repeating it. Shakespeare had none of his own if it comes to that, and is revered for the life he brought to stories already extant, not for any original story.

      While the settings and actors change the stories have remained a well trodden field since the days of sitting around the tribal fire listening to the elders tell tales.

      People are boring.

      KFG
    • If you're looking for something refreshing, try Tim Powers (The Anubis Gates, On Stranger Tides, Last Call, Expiration Date, The Drawing of the Dark, Declare, others).
    • What has happened to the Chuck Palahniuks of the world?

      Oh they're around, and then some!
      Get your mitts on anything by Haruki Murakami, Jeff Noon, and Jim Dodge for a refreshingly unconventional contemporary read.
      Somewhat older (although that's hardly important), and well worth checking out are, Kobo Abe, Italo Cavino, Borges, Tom Robbins, Alain Robbe-Grillet..
      there's some fantastic stuff out there :)
    • What has happened to the Chuck Palahniuks of the world? Even his books have become too samy samy.. is it me, or do we need another Wodehouse to rise up?

      I humbly suggest you check out Christopher Buckly. Little Green Men is a comical political thriller which shines a glaring light on the culture of alien abductees and Sunday morning Washington TV journalists. Thank You For Smoking is a painfully funny novel in which the protagonist is a paid lobbiest for a tobacco "research institute" which is actually a

  • Gaiman... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:24PM (#8259423) Homepage
    At first, I thought he was cool... but the novelty of his work is quickly wearing off. American Gods didn't turn my crank, and his much lauded "American from a British perspective" was bull, even a Canuck like me can see that. The fairy tale about Star and Wall (I forget the name) came out pretty bland. Maybe I'm just not a fantasy person, but IMHO he should stick to comic books. Still, Good Omens was wonderful, easily topping much of Pratchett's solo work.

    Oh well, YMMV.
    • I'm still trying to figure out how this book won a Hugo and why it's received so much critical praise. To me, it was a blandly executed book based on a "sort of" cool idea(though, to be fair, there were a couple of cool parts). The concept of newer personifications of social concious vs older ones is intriguing and maybe there is an interesting story there somewhere; that interesting story was not American Gods. Or maybe there was something else to this book that I missed?

    • Re:Gaiman... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by APDent ( 81994 )
      Good Omens was wonderful, easily topping much of Pratchett's solo work.

      I'd say it was better than some of Pratchett's earlier work, and not as good as most of Pratchett's later work. I like Good Omens a lot (I've read it a couple of times), but Pratchett's books about the city watch are more consistently interesting and better written. Night Watch is a fine example of this, as is the recently reprinted (in the US) Guards! Guards!.
    • Graphic books, not comic books! Even though they're still read by the same audience who live with their parents, it's different, dude!

      Now excuse me while I spank the monkey to a cartoon show. Er, I mean, anime.

  • Ummm Hello (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zebbers ( 134389 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:25PM (#8259442)
    The similarities that the author of the review that alludes to a hint of suspicion of influence and or plaigarism is retarded. Most content is recycled and reissued. There isn't much in original ideas or plots...its how those plots are developed and examined that make the difference.

    A billion books probably start off with the protagonist losing a loved one. Hello.

    • Re:Ummm Hello (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Jotaigna ( 749859 )
      so it does Disney, have you noticed the protagonist is always a child whos parents are divorced or dead? (Lion King, Bambi) or have racial differences(Pocahontas), kinda exploiting our own traumas to relate to the characters...

      • Re:Ummm Hello (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Walter Wart ( 181556 )
        It's not just a Disney thing. Stories for or about children usually start by freeing the child from the presence of the parents. At least if the parents are the sort who do their job - which is to protect their kids from the sorts of dangerous and traumatic events that make for really good stories :-)

        The fish out of water is one of the most common storytelling tropes. One of the first things the author has to do is remove the water.

  • Great... another SCO story? (Score:5, Funny)

    by baywulf ( 214371 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:32PM (#8259506)
    When I saw the title "King Rat" I thought this was another SCO story.

  • Also check out Tim Powers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Coventry ( 3779 ) * on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:33PM (#8259519) Journal
    If you like modern, urban fantasy, then check out Tim Powers' Fischer-king series (its not officially called that, but thats what I consider it). Start with 'Last Call' and then work you way up. The whole series predates Gaiman's work by many a year, and I have no idea if the similarities of style and type of story are due to coincidence or influence. Actually, I enjoy just about everything I've gotten my hands on from Tim Powers, including 'Anubis Gates' and 'The Drawing of the Dark' (which could be considered part of the Fischer Kind series, just set in the past by several hundred years).

    I will say this though - many of the books have a similar, almost formulaic feel to the main character. The details may be different, but the fact that they just lost someone they love in the begining of the novel tends to be eirily similar. That said, its not always there, and the details of whom, how and why are always very different.
    • I second the Tim Powers recommendation.

      I can't praise Powers enough. And yet, the usual scifi/fantasy geeks here on Slashdot and elsewhere, the kind who devours Gaiman, Stephenson, Heinlein, Adams etc., don't seem to be aware of Powers. Are his books hard to find? Badly marketed? Not cool enough?

      If anyone can do the disturbing, visceral, gothic and above all surreal magical realism, it is Powers. Gaiman is a good, inventive author. Occasionally in American Gods there are brief flashes of storytelling wh

    • ...and if you like Powers, you might also like Steven Erikson's stuff. Steve's stuff has some Powers influence and will probably appeal to Powers' fans.
    • If you like Tim Powers, you might also like James Blaylock, who writes with a similar style but a bit more whimsy. They have collaborated a few times.

  • Home page (Score:5, Informative)

    by MooCows ( 718367 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:35PM (#8259540)
    This [panmacmillan.com] seems to be his new homepage.

    I read the other book (Perdido Street Station) a week ago. I though it was pretty good.
    (although perhaps with an overdose of unconnected storylines)
    There's a sequel to that one out too, called The Scar [panmacmillan.com]
    • MooCows wrote: There's a sequel to that one out too, called The Scar

      Not quite--The Scar is set after Perdido Street Station, but it's about different characters in a different part of the same world, and it goes into a lot more detail about that world. Perdido was almost entirely about the city it was set in; The Scar talks about other places and explains a bit about why the world is so... weird. One of the characters in Perdido is mentioned in The Scar for about half a page, but that's it. It's certa

  • Symptomatic of historical revisionism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:44PM (#8259618)

    At least with Gaiman's "American Gods" the author was recasting mythological figures in a new light, and while criminally negligent in his characterizations, it was nevertheless a fascinating read.

    In this book, however, I find much to despise, and it reminds me of how Julie Taymor butchered Shakespeare's "Titus" by recasting it in a pseudo-fascist-modern period. Or how "Cold Mountain" romanticizes the South and ignores the issue of slavery. Or how Gibson's "Braveheart" becomes an anti-English Scottish propaganda piece, though it has more holes than a pound of Swiss cheese. Can't so-called "artists" leave well enough alone? The same happens here -- the historical town of Hameln is twisted into Hamlin, and an allegory of emigration become an epic battle of good versus evil.

    To wit: Hameln is a town in Lower Saxony, Niedersachsen, in Germany. In the Middle Ages thousands of German emigrants, enticed by tax breaks and offers of free land, made the thousand mile trek to Transylvania, then more or less a part of the kingdom of Hungary. Of course, it was the skilled classes that left, and the young, leaving behind the old and the weak.

    Thus an exciting and influential event in the course of European history is manipulated for the sake of low-class genre fiction by a Gaiman-imitator.

    I think I'll stick with Turtledove.

    • What? (Titus) (Score:4, Insightful)

      by juuri ( 7678 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @01:51PM (#8260266) Homepage
      Did you even watch Titus all the way through? It is absolutely brilliant, aware that most of the audience wouldn't be able to empathize with the true shock and horror as Shakespeare wrote it Taymour grabbed familiar, but horrible things from all over the 1900s to allow modern audiences to fully feel the disgust and discomfort originally intended.

      Perhaps you should watch it again with an open mind? This time try going past the first few minutes, okay?
    • "made the thousand mile trek to Transylvania"

      they must have gone the narvik route then. I think Transylvania and Germany are a little closer together than that
    • Mieville freely amits that he rips off culture:

      "My attitude to this sort of stuff is entirely piratical and philistine. I plunder myths or whatever but without any respect for their symbolic heritage." -- China Meiville

      I seriously doubt that he has no issues doing the same for historical events.

      The man steals and other people's cultures and histories, takes them completely out of context, and uses them for his own ends...and I think that that is totally in keeping with the way he writes...

      full quote is
    • I thought Titus was a pretty decent adaptation. I don't think it was an attempt to re-cast the Bard's story in more modern period, a'la Luhrman's romeo and juliet. The Roman and Goth soldiers were wearing brigandine plate and using short swords, after all. There were props that did have a fascist feel, I agree, but I suspect they were more to give the flavor of Saturninus' rule, rather than set an era. *shrugs*
      Turtledove does rule, though...
    • I am afraid I have to agree with Anonymous Coward. The down side is that Mieville seems to be using well-worn themes and plot lines. The up side is that after working very familiar territory in the SF and horror genres, he made a step-level jump in Perdido Street Station and The Scar. Some of us think he is at the top of his game now. Many SF writers cut their teeth writing short stories. Mieville has done his experimenting with themes and characters and honing of skills in his first book. After hummi

  • What if you didn't like American Gods? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gbulmash ( 688770 ) <semi_famous@noSpAM.yahoo.com> on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:52PM (#8259682) Homepage Journal
    American Gods felt trite and familiar to me, a re-hashing of themes and ideas that never truly gelled into something with its own sense of originality. I loved Neverwhere, which is what got me to read AG, but Gaiman fell a few notches in my estimation with AG.

    So, the question is, if you loved Neverwhere, but American Gods left a bad taste in your mouth, how will King Rat fare?

    • Poor Meiville. Rat is a far stronger book than Neverwhere, but the similar 'underside of London' theme shoves it perpetually into Gaiman's shadow. The only thing Meiville really has in common with Gaiman is being somewhat English, and a tendency towards horror-tinged dark urban fantasy - London is a major character in Rat, and the fictitious cities of New Crobuzon and Armada are very much major characters in Perdido Street Station and The Scar.

      It's one of the better pieces of fantasy I've read in recent ye
      • I think there's something a little deeper going on. Back in the Bad Old Days, when most of us lived in small towns and villages, Elfland was over the hill or through the forest or across the water.

        We're more urban now. Mirkwood (aka the Black Forest) has been cut down. All that's across the Atlantic is Europe or the Americas (most of us forget about Africa). China isn't exotic and magical. It's the world's workshop.

        So where does that leave Faerie? It has to be somewhere familiar enough to identify with bu
  • I wonder if there are any books out there that deal with chareters in a similar setting, but with the Native American mythos, or even the Austrailuan? I have read several that deal with Africa, and more than a few dealing with European and English settings, but I have been looking up some of the folklore of those other cultures (of which I confess I know nothing about) and I wonder if the tragic hero can be re-hashed, yet again?

  • Borribles (Score:5, Interesting)

    by APDent ( 81994 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @01:04PM (#8259781)
    I don't want to assert who was influenced by whom, but some significant elements of Neverwhere -- London as a setting, the critical presence of rats, a malevolent, almost-unkillable foe...

    I assert they were all influenced by Michael de Larrabeiti's The Borribles [theborribles.co.uk], which was published in 1976. I'm probably wrong -- it's been years since I read this, and I was quite young when I did -- but I vividly remember London and rats. The Borribles was the first of a trilogy, all of which have been out of print for a long while; however, while Googling for the link, above, I made the happy discovery that they have been reissued (ISBN: 0330490850).

    • Re:Borribles (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think they were all 'plagiarised' from the plague. London as a setting, the critical presence of rates, a malevolent, almost unkillable foe...

  • Perdido Street Station (Score:5, Informative)

    by abigor ( 540274 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @01:12PM (#8259865)
    The only other Mieville book I've read, Perdido Street Station, didn't impress me at all. Underneath the hey-wow story setting - a city set amongst the ribs of a giant, dead beast - I found a pretty typical storyline, and some truly godawful writing. I mean, exposition and description are nice, but come on.

    Right now, I'm reading a bunch of Elmore Leonard. Does anyone write better dialogue than this guy? No. His books are taut and practically impossible to put down - unlike Mieville's, which I struggled mightily to finish.
    • I discovered Mieville and Perdido Street Station (PSS) due to the old "Another Reader Like You Recommends" feature at Amazon. The main overlap between the other person and me seemed to be books by Gaiman or Gibson.

      I struggled through the first half of PSS and kept with it mainly because I felt that I was supposed to like it. The storyline eventually tightened up, and the last half was an engaging read.

      Having read Neverwhere and American Gods, I can definitely see the similarities, but I would also toss in
      • Yeah, Mieville had some cool ideas, but the guy simply can't write. His characters were cliched, the dialogue was clunky, and all that overwrought description just killed me. Honestly, good ideas can't overcome bad writing. And PSS is bad.

        Of course, that's just my opinion - if you enjoyed it, then that's excellent, and money well spent.

  • More in this vein (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Walter Wart ( 181556 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @01:15PM (#8259890) Homepage
    I've been a fan of China Mieville since his now-impossible-to-find story "The Tain". He's part of a non-movement in F&SF which owes a lot to Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock and similar. Largely British, mostly urban, and set in worlds where reality's gears are missing a few teeth.

    If you like King Rat you'll probably enjoy his other books (Perdido Street Station and The Scar) and books by authors like...

    Tim Powers, Jeff Vandermeer, Ian MacLeod, Neil Gaiman, Johnathan Carroll, Alan Moore, M. John Harrison, Forrest Aguirre, Jeffrey Ford, and Jasper Fforde. Mary Gentle, Gene Wolfe, and Borges will almost certainly also appeal.

    And of course, if you have $200 just lying around doing nothing you will want to get a copy of the Codex Serafinianus just to squick yourself.
    • China Mieville's The Tain is now published as part of the Cities anthology from Gollancz edited by Peter Crowther along with stories by Michael Moorcock, Paul de Fillipo, and Geoff Ryman.
  • Are those from the submitter or does a slashdot editor do that?

  • Hmm... (Score:1)

    by F452 ( 97091 )
    I enjoyed Perdido Street Station and The Scar, but didn't like American Gods at all. Mieville created worlds that I wanted to learn more about, and had characters I was interested in. I thought Gods was simply boring. It was an ordeal making it to page 200, where I finally put it down. I don't even want to give it away - it may end up going in the trash, which is normally unthinkable for me.

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cmpalmer ( 234347 )
      Your mileage may vary...

      Perdido Street Station was weird, imaginative, and thought-provoking, but ultimately (IMHO) sort of boring and pointless. I recommend it, but I didn't feel that it lived up to the hype. I am looking forward to reading The Scar.

      I loved 85% of American Gods. Unfortunately, the 15% that I didn't like was the resolution. Yes, it had one. Yes, I understood it. For some reason I just wasn't satisfied by it, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. I wasn't bored by it (the book

  • I'm sorry.... (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Hitch ( 1361 )
    did he say that the pied piper's name is peter? as in peter piper? the guy who picked a peck of pickled peppers?

  • That's NOT incredible... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Skip666Kent ( 4128 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @01:55PM (#8260312)
    Please, please stop using the word 'incredibly' to describe things that, incredibly, are really quite credible after all.

    The book is similar to Neverwhere? Good. Thanks for the info, but pardon me if my eyes don't exactly widen with amazement.

    Mieville's writing style is similar to Gaiman's but different? Fine. It's nice to know, but exactly leave me choking on my sandwich.

    Ahh...the scent of freshly picked nits!

  • It's OK, but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Cragen ( 697038 )
    it's not as good as China's more recent stuff. Not-so-good-China-Meiville is still better than 90% of the rest of SFF. Speaking of the other 10%, I just finished the Hyperion series (4 books) by Dan Simmons. I am now doing something I have never, ever, done before. I am returning straight to book one and starting over. Take all your favorite adjectives and add "and moving." to the end. Stunning. (The Matrix is rumored to have stolen its plot from the Hyperion books. Now that Hyperion is, supposedly, going
    • I've read the first 3 or for Hyperion books... And I don't see Anything even similar to the matrix in them. Afer the first they started to bore me silly though so I never did learn the origin of the shrike .. maybe it starts geting matrix like then?

      As for the original topic, Read King Rat about 4 years ago and REALLY liked it. I think the original reviewer needs to read more urban fantasy ;). The similarities between Gaiman's works and King Rat are weak at best, mostly just both drawing from common th
  • Doctor Rat [amazon.com], by William Kotzwinkle. Also quite good.
  • I enjoyed American gods because it mirrored some ideas that friends and I had thought about when we were first getting into fantasy and Dungeon and Dragons, but like many of you, I wanted something more.

    Neverwhere however was a most excellent book and reminded of author Charles de Lint. In his books (of which there are many) he writes about a town (canadian if I remember right) in which it seems the line between the fairy world and ours is a bit blurred. Many of the stories involve everyday normal humans c

    • If you want a book in which "it seems the line between the fairy world and ours is a bit blurred. Many of the stories involve everyday normal humans coming into their first contact with the little bit of magic all around them. Some believe immediately while others take convincing. Many characters recur through the books and short stories and eventually you may find yourself wrapped up into his little world.", I would highly recommend Sylvie and Bruno [worldwideschool.org] . It is quite a Christian novel, which may be off-putt

  • It's been a while since I read this book, so my details may be a little off...

    but I still vividly remember the feeling that I could have written it myself (given enough time/resources), and as I'm not a professional writer (but am an avid reader) I don't think that is a great impression to have of a book.

    Basically I recall that a good portion of the book was cliched, and where it wasn't a direct cliche, it was railing against the obvious cliche in a not very clever way.

    The narrative was way too linear.

    A
  • is an excellent author, King Rat, Taipan and Shogun (maybe you've heard of it) are all good

    i don't read that much but shogun was enough to make me take a year of japanese...

  • Irritated by the ending. Basically, 'there is no such thing as redemption, there shouldn't be, and if someone does something bad when he is young he ought to go on paying for it for the rest of his life, because he's evil.'

    I'll probably read King Rat at some point, but I'm certainly waiting for the paperback. Perdido was good, but the author's philosophy and mine are squarely at odds.

    -fred

  • Drum'n'bass (Jungle) music (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PollyJean ( 54795 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @07:32PM (#8264684)

    I adore China Mieville's work. I had the pleasure of meeting him at a convention last year. He's a brilliant, interesting guy who writes brilliant, interesting novels.

    I'm a bit disappointed that the reviewer downplayed the drum'n'bass aspects of King Rat. It's part of why I love the novel. It's rare that an author can so strongly render a subculture that revolves so much around music. The musical fusion that is drum'n'bass is fascinating, both from a dancing point-of-view and from a headphone music point-of-view. When I read King Rat, I found it exciting that the novel ended up hinging on the interplay between rhythm and melody, and that the importance of rhythm - so often under-appreciated in Western music - was essential to the plot.

    I've read all three of Mieville's published novels. I prefer Bas-Lag (the world of Perdido Street Station and The Scar. I believe the forthcoming Iron Council also takes place in Bas-Lag) to the London of King Rat. But I enjoyed the time I spent there in reading the novel and would highly recommend it. And if people who read King Rat take the time to discover drum'n'bass, especially the best stuff from the 90s, then even better.

  • Anyone who enjoys Neil Gaiman will love the Sandman series. While technically a comic book, it is done intelligently enough to keep the interest of even the discerning reader. There are ten in all (11 now I think) the whole series cost me about $300 to buy, and it was worth every penny (and I am not a rich man).

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