King Rat – China Mieville

China Mieville’s writing is better suited to this shorter form novel set in the ‘real world’. Two reasons. First, his plots always move at greater pace, and a fast pace in a long book inevitably means endless plot twists and turns and hang-ups which become tiresome. Second, in a page-turner you inevitably ignore the quality of prose as you scramble eagerly for the next turn of the story, and while the prose here is very good, there is less to miss as he can be far more economical in describing real London – even rat-world London – than in describing his wholly invented locations in the world of Bas Lag. I prefer the writing here, as in describing a real city he is forced to maintain more control and restriction, compared to the Bas Lag books where he revels too much sometimes in his own invention.

The character of King Rat is semi-brilliant. He is a probably a villain, but not the villain of the book, but his brilliance is in his speech. He speaks in cockney, the accent lifts clear from the page. It makes him both modern and ancient; modern, for fantasy characters rarely speak in anything but nice and rounded accents or cod-medieval or west country; ancient, for there is long heritage in this accent, and it allows him to casually use old phrases which otherwise would be heavy with pretension. Eg “I was always partial to a snatch or two of verse. If you know some poesy you might know this story already.” Overall, the character has an originality and realness (I think of endless villains and hard coppers on The Bill of old) at the same time as retaining shreds of mysticism and old evil about him. “King Rat sat brooding on his grandiose brick seat”.

The setting in real London and Mieville’s familiarity with these characters and their speech also allows him to bring more humour than the Bas Lag books. He always has a tendency to undermine his characters, to show them thinking themselves weak, ridiculous, shamed etc, but that is not enough to fight the inflating seriousness of his relentless darkness (part of which is his desire to constantly make his characters suffer, as Stephen Donaldson). But where characters come up with lines like “if you want to sit there on your rat arse and mope, then fine”, the darkness is offset with some humanity.

The use of the Pied Piper legend is inspired, the way he makes it into the crux of the whole plot. Ordinarily the story would be used with the characters in the position of the people of Hamlin – calling on the Piper’s services and then suffering for their unfaithfulness. But Mieville makes more of it by making the Piper a psychopath who just wishes to control, and giving the rats memories. The inclusion at the climax of the children of Hamlin brings also a slightly disturbing edge to the tale, a glimpse of the horrifying which most traditional fairy tales have but which is often forgotten and papered over in retellings and in modern fantasy, an edge of darkness also characteristic of the Bas Lag books.

By winding the Piper’s search for control through music to a modern urban musical scene he both makes the music of the Piper more real and lets us see a modern music and its tribes as something older and more traditional than we let ourselves realise. The Piper’s music is not something abstract described on the page, not just an idea of pretty flute melodies, it is something which can be mixed over the heaviest jungle, it is that treble you heard once in that song at that party and which you thought at the time was so seductive. And the jungle scene and the music of its moment then seem like something more continuous. A new music, its like never heard before, but nonetheless a music in a continuity of ages of music, useful still to this ancient musician the Piper. You can almost imagine in hundreds of years the tale being told of the Pied Piper of the Elephant and Castle, with the jungle music seeming as twee and archaic as medieval

pipe music is to us. Mieville also doesn’t miss the chance to take a few well-meaning digs at the traditions and customs of the jungle scene, noting the feudal status of the DJs amongst other things. The decision to pivot the climax on the conflict of (European) melody vs (black) rhythm is interesting, some would think it cheesy, but it works.

The ending is refreshing, as it confirms that Saul is a character who makes his own choices. There is no easy conclusion to who or what he is or how he will live (happily ever after?). He fiercely chooses neither to settle with King Rat nor to rid himself of him; the end is left in an atmosphere of floating bitterness which we know will not disperse without the help of another story. King Rat is neither evil nor good, there is no use wiping him out from a story point of view, and Mieville’s decision to leave him there, shamed, angry, haunting and tenacious, gives the ending a suffusion of realism and confirms the tone of the whole story so far. After all, there are no doubt hundreds of other such ambiguities, unresolved, lingering, in Mieville’s London. Choices unmade, fights unfinished, promises unfulfilled.

Fantasy needs China Mieville. He helps to anchor high pretensions and shows derivate fantasy ideas in a sharp light. For me his is a touchstone.

PS: This would make an excellent movie (if properly done etc of course). It would be a kind of anti-Matrix, in which the hero is super-strong not because he is transcendent but because he is vermin. Instead of a shiny sharply dressed young man, a hero who stinks of sewage and eats garbage and has no love-interest except maybe a mentally damaged homeless girl. Moving in an urban world which is more real than our own, hidden in our own city in the places we choose not to look, not in a world which is the fantasy of computers. And with a jungle theme…