Award-winning fantasy and science fiction author China Mieville's began his astounding career with the fantasy King Rat, a mix of a young man's search for identity with a pulse-pounding story of revenge and madness. "[Mieville's] prose melds James Herbert's nihilistic violence with the metropolitan paranoia of Martin Amis, circa London Fields." --The Times (London) Something stirs in London's dark--and has viciously murdered Saul Garamond's father. Framed for the crime, Saul breaks out of prison with the help of King Rat, and plunges into a subterranean world of rats, garbage, blood, and madness--a world Saul was born to rule. But King Rat has plans for Saul, his special weapon in a war that goes back to a town called Hamelin. . . .