[UA] Book Recommendation: King Rat

[Niall Sweby]

While its a little quiet I'd like to recommend a book that I haven't seen mentioned on here before but to me captures 'UA wierdness' for London - or indeed any dirty urban area perfectly. 

Its written by China Mieville who's more famous for Perdido Street Station and other books set in that world and because its set in the real world its a lot less fantastical while still retaining the sense of seeing the world from a different view. 

I suppose the comparison book would be Neverwhere, which I do really like, but having read King Rat I think it is far superior for UA inspiration. The best comparison I can give without going into too much detail is that King Rat is UA while Neverwhere is WoD (not that its a criticism of WoD or Neverwhere but an observation of the feel of the books). 

The magic is also more in tune with UA - for instance the main character directly gains his rat atributes of strength and speed from the calories of stolen food, taken from rubbish tips and bags and it almost seems as the book progresses that his taboo is consuming fresh food - he can only scavenge. 

Finally the characters are very UA - no one is 'evil' in the sense that Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar are evil in Neverwhere; they act of pure self-interest and ego and the harm they do others is justified in these terms (i.e. if I do it it must be good) rather than because they are 'bad'. 

Having just read it I'm thinking of introducing the character ideas into a UA game I'm about to start. If anyone has read it what do you think King Rat and the others could be - variation urbanomancers or perhaps some sort of avatar. I'm leaning to the latter as their powers are a lot more fixed than adepts and do seem to require following some sort of behaviour rather than belief.

Niall