Name: The Rats
Rating: 4 (15 reviews)
ISBN: 9781447264521

Neil Gaiman

James Herbert

The Rats

Tim Pendry

Reasonably counted as a 'modern' (1974) horror classic, 'The Rats' is, in fact, flawed as literature. It is a first novel. Herbert, then an advertising copywriter, writes well but (as widely noted by other critics) mars his tale with stereotypical scene-setting characterisations that jar. Having said that, its merits go beyond its widely accepted role as apparent initiator of a sub-genre of horror in which nature rebels against humanity and a portion of it becomes an unmanageable predator against humanity itself - in this case, rats. In fact, the idea is not quite as new as it seems. Machen's 'The Terror' (1917) has animals horrifyingly turning against humans in a reflection of humanity's own slaughter of itself during the First World War. John Wyndham gave us triffids and other similar more fantastic upsurges in the 1950s. Nevertheless, although Herbert 'spawned' many imitators in which slugs, frogs, moths, ants, crabs and so forth wreaked bloody mayhem against our species, his 'The Rats' stands up well in first place on two grounds - the use of location and the set-pieces in which we see real terror unfold. The location is the contemporary East End (1970s). Herbert does not hide a lightly held 'political' message about the horror arising not merely from a weak mad scientist trope of nuclear-linked experimentation but from the ability of the horror to spread because of squalor and deprivation. His hero is (of all things and rather implausibly) a school teacher. The authorities (other than front-line workers) are somewhat bungling and complacent. We have, consciously or unconsciously, a traditional 'Labour' sense of the respectable working class being both victim and resource. I write 'respectable' working class because early victims are mostly people who have sunk to the bottom of society. Their deaths should have been taken as harbingers of what is to come. These people were weak but also abandoned. The last is not forgivable because valuable time was lost. Herbert is aspirational - working class but requiring that, assisted by society and the State, education and hard work be part of the mix. This was 'socialism' as the British understood it before that same education ideologised it from that very decade into today's utopian Zoomer nonsense. So, the rats are created by something like a secret arising out of the Secret State, and become a threat to humanity because the not-so-secret public part of that State is complacent, failing at its task of creating the good society. Actions when they come are too little, too late. Only our hero (no doubt Herbert's subconscious alter ego) gets it. He takes charge often enough to at least create the illusion of a victory over the rats. He shoots around London like an action hero in ways that would be ridiculous if the book was not such an exciting read regardless. And this is where it gets to be very good. It may be comic book in conception but the set pieces - notably a titanic battle between rats and humans in a secondary school where no child dies but others do - are powerfully realistic and horrific. Herbert spares us no gruesome detail. He starts as he means to go on, not only with individual deaths but making one of the early ones the slaughter by rats of a small child and a dog when an unsuspecting mother leaves the child 'for only a moment' - a judgemental implication hiding in there somewhere! A boundary of horror is crossed. In another set piece of awesome horrific power, rats take out three people at an underground station and then undertake a brutal mass attack on an underground train. Three people attempt to flee caught between the rats and a fire started underground on a stalled train. The book is also unremitting in its bloody description of what two foot long rats as big as dogs can do to a human being when operating in large packs. Another set piece has derelicts on wasteland ripped apart in ways that leave nothing to the imagination. Some areas are only partially developed but this works to help the imagination feel the greater horror - the fact that a single bite from a rat leads to a horrible death, the question of the hive intelligence of the rats, the curious ability of a few humans to walk through them unscathed as if not noticed. Ideas undeveloped or not developed fully, as well as the expected inconclusive but ominous ending, suggests the inevitability of eventual sequels. The work sold well enough to permit two more 'rat' tales in 1979 and 1984 and a graphic novel in 1993. It was also praised helpfully by Stephen King.

It was only when the bones of the first devoured victims were discovered that the true nature and power of these swarming black creatures with their razor-sharp teeth and the taste for human blood began to be realised by a panic-stricken city. For millions of years man and rats had been natural enemies. But now for the first time - suddenly, shockingly, horribly - the balance of power had shifted... `The effectivenes of the gruesome set pieces and brilliant finale are all on its own' Sunday Times

Couldn't put it down, classic horror. Brilliant from start to finish.

Charlie Harris 

Ryan Mateyk

This was the literary equivalent of a pulpy, B-movie creature feature and it was GLORIOUS.
A deadly mutated version of a common pest? Check.
An unassuming, unimportant guy saving the day? Check.
Gratuitous sex? Gratuitous gore? Check and check.
It's got it all people! I'll be squirming myself to sleep tonight.

A special fortieth anniversary edition of The Rats, the classic, bestselling novel that launched James Herbert's career. With a foreword by Neil Gaiman. It was only when the bones of the first devoured victims were discovered that the true nature and power of these swarming black creatures with their razor sharp teeth and the taste for human blood began to be realized by a panic-stricken city. For millions of years man and rats had been natural enemies. But now for the first time – suddenly, shockingly, horribly – the balance of power had shifted . . .

Jemima Scott

natalia

Ellie Bourner

**A special 40th anniversary edition of the classic, bestselling novel that launched James Herbert's career** It was only when the bones of the first devoured victims were discovered that the true nature and power of these swarming black creatures with their razor sharp teeth and the taste for human blood began to be realised by a panic-stricken city. For millions of years man and rats had been natural enemies. But now for the first time - suddenly, shockingly, horribly - the balance of power had shifted . . . 'The effectiveness of the gruesome set pieces and brilliant finale are all its own' Sunday Times

The Rats

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