King Rat
China Mieville
413 pages

This was Mieville's first book and as such not as strong as Perdido Street Station, though it shares the later's strong sense of place. In this case this place is contemporary London, as King Rat is a contemporary fantasy set partly in the drum 'n bass scene in London, as well in the hidden pathways of the city: sewers, underground tunnels and the like.

When Saul is innocently arrested by the police for the murder of his father, he's freed from the police bureau by a strange man, who claims to be his uncle, has strange powers and whose name is King Rat. King Rat tells Saul is half rat himself and that his father was murdered by the Pied Piper and now he, Saul has to kill the Piper before he's killed himself...

I'm not a big horror fan, and there were some gruesome scenes where King Rat ventured a bit too far into horror country for my liking, as was also the case with Perdido Street Station. This matters little for the quality of the book though. The descriptions of London and its undergound were very convincing, though the drum 'n bass scene was less real to me; describing music in prose is difficult anyway.