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Feb. 27th, 2008 08:35 pmI've read all China Mieville's New Crobuzon books, and I actually like him a lot. He's totally allergic to happy endings, but he consistently wins me over with these fantastic dream/nightmare images that linger in your head - a city made of ships, a stolen train with rails being constantly laid down in front of it. King Rat is his first book, though, and set in our world (London, to be specific) so when I picked it up I wasn't sure how much I would like it. The setup seemed fairly ordinary through the first few chapters; kind of whiny tweenager Saul, not sure what to do with his life, is suddenly plunged into a traumatic situation and discovers he has a role to play in a hidden magical underworld. Two chapters in comes the reveal: Saul? Is half rat royalty. His first magical power? Being able to eat any garbage without throwing up!
At which point I looked up from the text and admitted, "All right. Well played, Mieville. THIS TIME!"
Basically, King Rat is Mieville trying to go turn your typical fantasy Ordinary Boy = Secret Royalty Premise on its head and make it into an urban nightmare, and in that he mostly succeeds, I think. Which is not to say the book doesn't have flaws, and significant ones. It's very clearly a first novel; there are definitely places where he's trying too hard (yes, it's very impressive that you know what 'crepuscular', 'susurrus', and 'liminal' mean, but you do not have to prove to us that you do. It's okay!) and concepts that could use tweaking. There were also places where I was really disappointed he did not go a lot further on overturning the usual tropes.
( Spoilers under cut. )
In sum: if you like very dark urban fantasy, King Rat is probably a good book for you. Me, I mostly enjoyed it, although it didn't leave me with the intense images the New Crobuzon-verse books do; this book is more of an adaptation and a patchwork, but even here you can see Mieville's imagination working double-time. For people who know his other books, it's also kind of cool to see how London here is slowly turning into the kind of living, terrifying city that is probably the template for New Crobuzon.
At which point I looked up from the text and admitted, "All right. Well played, Mieville. THIS TIME!"
Basically, King Rat is Mieville trying to go turn your typical fantasy Ordinary Boy = Secret Royalty Premise on its head and make it into an urban nightmare, and in that he mostly succeeds, I think. Which is not to say the book doesn't have flaws, and significant ones. It's very clearly a first novel; there are definitely places where he's trying too hard (yes, it's very impressive that you know what 'crepuscular', 'susurrus', and 'liminal' mean, but you do not have to prove to us that you do. It's okay!) and concepts that could use tweaking. There were also places where I was really disappointed he did not go a lot further on overturning the usual tropes.
( Spoilers under cut. )In sum: if you like very dark urban fantasy, King Rat is probably a good book for you. Me, I mostly enjoyed it, although it didn't leave me with the intense images the New Crobuzon-verse books do; this book is more of an adaptation and a patchwork, but even here you can see Mieville's imagination working double-time. For people who know his other books, it's also kind of cool to see how London here is slowly turning into the kind of living, terrifying city that is probably the template for New Crobuzon.
