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[skygiants]

I'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. Specifically, I was really frustrated with the treatment of Natasha and Fabian - your standard Hero's Friends of the Female and Of Color Persuasion, respectively. I liked Natasha and Fabian a lot, and since they actually spend the whole novel apart from Saul, and got several early chapters from their respective perspectives, I was hoping they would continue to have awesome agency! Instead . . . they got turned into Bait for the Hero. ARGH. The storyline for the detective was another one that got developed halfway, and then dropped.

However, the lost children of Hamelin? Fabulously creepy. And I loved Saul setting up the Republic of Rat - I don't think it has a chance in hell of working, but the sort of memorial to his father was lovely. And I was amazed! The ending is potentially optimistic! GO MIEVILLE!

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.

Comments

[private-meek.livejournal.com]

I read UnLunDun last summer and absolutely despised it. I couldn't even tell you why. Something about the tone was unbearable. I haven't been able to get into any of the New Crobuzon books, either-- but the strange thing is, I love the story of his that's in one of the McSweeney's anthologies, about the Viae Ferae.

Also he once said something in an interview that I loved concerning the distinction, basically, between storytellers and other people-- apparently his girlfriend and he were in their apartment and she said to him, "The fridge men are coming!" and it occurred to him that there are the people who would hear that and assume that a fridge was going to be delivered... and then there are the people who expect an army of cyborg creatures to show up. I'm paraphrasing.

[skygiants]

UnLunDun is actually the only one of his books I haven't read, I think (and I haven't read any of the short stories either, sadly) but I think I know what you mean about his tone. Sometimes his actual writing style throws me out of a lot (and moreso in this book than in some of his others), often when it seems that he is trying very self-consciously to be Literary, but for me, the images do the work of pulling me back, so I end up more in the world he's building than out.

. . . that's kind of awesome.

[genarti]

Hee. That comment about fridge men is an excellent one.

...and I'm totally in the refrigerator cyborg camp, I fear.

[the_croupier]

Beccaaaaa. D=

Every time I finish a canon, you remind me of another great one I haven't read yet. XD

[skygiants]

So your reading list will never run dry! :D

. . . that is a terrible mixed metaphor, but you take my meaning.