King Rat – China Mieville

I quite enjoyed Perdido Street Station, so I was optimistic that I would enjoy this earlier novel from the same author given its London setting. There is lots of fun stuff about rat people in Bazalgette’s sewers and the city’s dark underbelly, which gets us through the first 100 pages or so on tale-spinning verve alone.

Unfortunately Mieville’s cliched and over-egged prose is far too weak to cope with some of the issues he enters into midway, such as mental illness or the emotional after-effects of rape. Even worse, the “overground” elements of the story are tied into the short-lived and unlamented Drum and Bass scene (solemnly capitalised throughout) and the “Big up dem Junglist Massive” rhetoric is initially risible and eventually irritating. It was a relief to finish it.