The Rats

Written by James Herbert

Narrated by Steven Pacey

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Apr 6, 2007
• ISBN: 9780230700789

James Herbert

James Herbert was not only Britain’s number one bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he held ever since publication of his first novel, but was also one of our greatest popular novelists. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty-three novels have sold more than fifty-four million copies worldwide, and have been translated into over thirty languages, including Russian and Chinese. In 2010, he was made the Grand Master of Horror by the World Horror Convention and was also awarded an OBE by the Queen for services to literature. His final novel was Ash. James Herbert died in March 2013.

Reviews for The Rats

[S. S. Yolken · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This author has always had talent and I would be a liar if I said he didn't. The Rats is a novel that starts out really strong, better than any other rat book probably does. It is enjoyable in many ways and I found it deeply unsettling how often the rats actually succeeded. It seems like they're building an immunity to the poison as this book goes on and I wonder if that'll factor into the next book.

I happily enjoyed this book focuses more on the rats than on the people. A lot of books focus on the people to the point that it's not about the rats it's not about the monster it's about these humans that I don't care about. I don't care if the people survive or die I want to see them fight the rats. So it is very refreshing to see a book focus on the rats and their relationship. Extremely good choice in what POV we should be following.

I didn't really find myself pulled into an emotional connection with these rats. I wasn't led to believe that I should love the rats nor love the humans. In a way they are both equally themselves and I enjoy that. This book does not force me to side with human or rodent kind it lets me choose my own prerogative and continue enjoying the book without feeling guilted for having an opinion one way or another.

Both rat kind and humankind are constantly slaughtered in this book, and both of their species deaths are played in an empathetic light. I can feel bad for the rats, and I can feel bad for the humans, and neither one is the wrong feeling to have.

It's refreshing, monster books always want you to fight against the monsters instead of just providing them as opportunist who went too far. James knew what he was doing.

4.5 stars.

[RichardKevinWilson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I forgot how extremely GORY and gross this first book of Herbert's was exactly! And I loved it. After not reading it since 1975 I thought I would like to listen to these 'Mother Nature Fights Back' books.......
WARNING: EXTREME SCENES OF ANIMAL SLAUGHTER AND ATTACKS BY RATS AND GORE!!!

5 Rats

[library_breeder · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book, easy read, very gory and will definitely keep you wary of any kind of rat in the future.

Written and set in 1970's London, it reminds me of early Stephen King when he wrote the Late Shift.

A monster story about extra large, extra vicious, rats who work together to swarm and eat anyone in their path. Many deaths in the book. It has a main story, and a lot of small sub-stories that take a couple of pages. These sub-stories are about the people who become the victims of these rats.

The depictions of the kills are very detailed. No one is spared, babies, kids, older folks, even dogs.

The race to kill these rats is on, because if only one is left, they will come back, and be even more pissed off. They are smarter and have much more strength and seem to be more blood thirsty than the everyday rat. They work together and just mow through anyone and anything in their path. They can scale walls, and eat through doors. Oh, and apparently if you manage to get away with only a bite or two, you die within 24 hours because no one actually survives the rats.

Obviously they aren't native to the area, but where did they come from?

[schmerguls · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

5786. The Rats, by James Herbert (read 11 Apr 2022) This book was first published in 1975. It is a famous book, and the first of many books by its author. It is so stupid and ridiculous that one is amazed that it could be found by anyone to be scary or gripping, though that is what it strives to be. It tells of rats doing much evil as London is assailed by rats. One finds it easy to keep reading since one cannot imagine anyone thinking it accomplishes what it so obviously tries to do--scare and horrify the reader, but the characters do such stupid things that no one can feel sorry for them. It culminates in the central character going into a place for no good reason and being attacked by rats. I should give it only a half star but I did not really find it repulsed me.

[charrlygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Old school horror fun! This was the kind of book that I read as a teen in the early 80s that caused me to become a life long fan of horror.
A rollicking good time. :)

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Rats by James Herbert was his first horror novel and was originally published in 1974. The author pulls no punches in this extremely violent, graphic and grisly story that includes death and mutilation by giant voracious rats. Set in London during the early 1970s, a new type of rat starts appearing. It’s larger, fiercer, smarter and hungrier than the average rat. With excellent pacing, the story moves quickly starting with the death of one homeless man and then moving on to a baby and the dog trying to protect it. Eventually these rats are stalking larger targets such as subway trains and schools. The main character who becomes the reluctant hero, is a school teacher who grew up and now teaches in one of the poorer areas of London, and happens to be the place were most of the rat attacks have occurred. This book definitely has that 1970s feel with the men being the heroes while the women stay in the background. I actually really enjoyed this throwback story, finding it just scary enough to give me the shivers and with plenty of action to keep the pages turning. Forty plus years after publication The Rats is still nasty, gruesome, gory and fun.

[stahl2ricco · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"They don't scurry when something bigger comes their way" - Rats by Pearl JamThough most of the lyrics don't apply to this story, that song was constantly in my head while I read this book! A gruesome tale of rats attacking and killing residents of England. Extremely violent and graphic! And the chapter with the baby... still makes me shudder...I really enjoyed the first chapter and the way the author set things up! It begins with a love story between two men, that quickly disintegrates and finds the jilted lover becoming the first victim of the rats. It's such a strange 7 page journey that began with me scratching my head and ended with me applauding the quick up/down fate of the character. Quirky and enjoyable!But, this is definitely not a read for the weak of stomach, or faint of heart! What the rats do to the people, and animals, is very detailed and fairly nasty to read. And lots of the chapters read like short stories, with different encounters between people and rats. Usually at the people's expense. Yeesh.I definitely liked this story, and the ending really made me want to read the next one! With this book, and "The Fog", I think I'm now a James Herbert fan!

[bridgey_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Rats - James Herbert ***I have always been a fan of the horror novel with Stephen King being amongst my favorite authors, so I often find Herbert in the same section and he has been recommended a few times by friends. Rats is the second book that I have read by the author, the first being Haunted. I wasn’t all that impressed but decided a few years later to give Rats a try, especially as it seems to be his most highly rated book.The plot is fairly straight forward, a large group of mutant (super sized) Rats have invaded London, they soon develop a taste for humans and attack upon sight. The government tries to control the epidemic and stop widespread panic, but it seems as if all the efforts are in vain as the body count stacks up. Unfortunately it seems that anyone not killed in the immediate attack will succumb to blood poisoning and death is only a matter of hours away. The main character is Harris, an art teacher who becomes involved in the investigation and subsequently must try to find a way to stop the onslaught.I don’t know if we have become desensitized these days, but I just didn’t find the book all that gruesome. There were no real frights and I found most of the dialogue fairly laughable. The book is nearly 4 decades old and maybe at the time of release it was revolutionary, but for me, what is really apparent is that it hasn’t really aged all that well. There are hundreds of raving reviews, many of which go along the lines of ‘I couldn’t put it down’… but I struggled to pick it up to be fair. If I had to pick a word that best sums up my feelings on Rats, it would have to be ‘childish’ – although I’m not sure what I really expected when reading a book about giant mutant killer rodents…I guess maybe Herbert just isn’t an author I will ever really enjoy. Possibly I will try another book of his one day, but it won’t be in the near future.

[baggman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A simple, fun read. No complex plots. No skipping back through chapters to figure out who the heck that character was. Not the greatest book that I've ever read, but certainly not as bad as some of the Goodreads reviews make it out to be. It's about super rats attacking London for goodness sake! You want quality literature, pick up a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird.

[dtw42 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A quick and easy read, no hard words or twisty sub-plots. Well written in a light pacy sort of way, probably aimed at a readership of seventeen-year-old boys.Not actually scary, just gruesome, kind of like a sexed-up gored-up Boys’ Own Adventure.Is it just me though, or is the plot device of a big successful conclusion, followed by a brief chapter or epilogue suggesting that the relief is just a respite and that it’s all storing up ready to happen again ... a REALLY hoary old cliché?

[elliepotten · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Harris would never forget the horror he felt under the gaze of the three pairs of sharp, wicked-looking eyes. It wasn't just their size, or natural repulsion of vermin that numbed him. It was because they didn't run, or try to hide. There was no sign of panic. Just three still bodies, malevolently watching the two men, as though deciding whether to swim across to them or go on their way." There's something about iconic 70s horror paperbacks that I just can't resist. I had a really good experience with Bernard Taylor's [The Godsend] when I read it last autumn, and I've heard people laughing nostalgically over both James Herbert's [The Rats] and Shaun Hutson's [Slugs] (which I assume is in a similar vein) when we've had them in the shop before. So when I saw this, complete with dreadful 70s cover, stacked on our office shelves, I leapt on it and started reading it on the spot. HOW COULD I NOT?! LOOK AT THAT FREAKY FACE! Like a nice rat from the front of a pet care book crossed with a rabid wolf. I LOVE IT. The cover, not the rat, obviously. I DIGRESS. So, the book. It was so cheesy, it was great. I mean, don't get me wrong, I quite like pet rats. We have rats in our walls sometimes, just regular brown country rats. But Herbert's rats are enormous mutant London black rats, which is totally different. There is no subtle psychological terror here beyond, y'know, our natural aversion to disease-ridden vermin. There's no sneaking up on people, no dastardly plotting and growing suspense. It's pretty much just a series of "ZOMG a giant rat!" END OF THE LINE FOR YOU, MY FRIEND. "I shall just pop out and leave this door open for a moment." AND NOW YOUR CHILD SLASH LOVEABLE FAMILY PET SHALL DIE. "I'll wander down into this deserted underground station to wait for the last train home." THERE'S A DIFFERENT LAST TRAIN ON THE CARDS FOR YOU, DUDE. You kinda want to scream, "Don't you know you're in a book about killer rats? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Like the book version of a bad horror film. Someone aaaaalways goes off by themselves, someone aaaaaalways tries to play the hero. CUE RAPID AND BLOODY DEATH. Marvellous stuff. Basic summary? There are giant rats in London. They start attacking people and animals, reducing them to a few tatters of clothing and a scattering of bones in minutes and developing quite a taste for human flesh. The attacks get larger and more public until they start to be described as 'massacres' and a state of emergency is declared. The city begins to shut down, while those mutant rats just keep on multiplyin'. By the end, action is taken to find out where the monsters came from and save London from this atrocity. BUT ARE THEY ALL DEAD? Course they're not. Given the fact that there are two sequels, OBVIOUSLY there's going to be a kind of "And then his hand twitched..." moment at the end. Y'know, like in The Terminator. Yes, it's cheesy, yes, it's predictable, but I loved it. I raced through it in about a day and a half - a miracle, given my sloth-like reading speed this year - and happened to stumble across the second book on the office shelves just before I finished the first. I don't normally read series back to back, preferring to break up my reading with other stuff, but I couldn't resist! Next up: A good shop-shelf hunt for the final book, Domain. I can't WAIT to find out where this series is going to end up!

[dchurch71 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Somehow I have never read a James Herbert novel, I am not sure how…with his recent passing I felt compelled to read some of his works. So I felt the Rats would be a good starting point. Amazing read, this was a page turner for me. It was like an adventure/horror novel all rolled into one. Loved Mr. Herbert’s writing style, and the way he described the ferocity of the rodent attacks made me wince & pull my feet up off of the floor a few times. I will definitely be picking up some more of the Late James Herbert. RIP.

[paul_salter-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Giants rats are trying to take over London after getting a taste for human blood.
Read this initially about 30 or so years ago, when I was in my early teens, still as enjoyable as when I first read it, quite a short book, but the next two novels in the series make up for that.
A great horror set in London from a UK author, recommended to anyone who likes horror stories.

[veeralpadhiar · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One positive you can always get out of these kind of books is that they don't pretend to be the "literally" type and as a result they are a quick read. But one major drawback that books like these suffer is that they are racist, misogynous by nature and more often than not are filled with cardboard characters.

Ok, understood. All of the above follies could be blamed on the era in which "The Rats" was written. But one thing that I could not understand was that the protagonist (Harris) did not even thought to arm himself once after his first serious "battle" against the rats in the school (he used a poker to fight the rats there)where he was employed as an art teacher.

But after that, wherever he went, he went totally unarmed relying on his hands to fight the rats. If only this glaring stupidity was being avoided, this book could have been so much better.

[michael5rimmer · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

My rating is based upon the general effect this book had on me as a child (I shouldn't really have read it so young) and upon my subsequent reading habits, and not upon the book's literary merits, assuming it has any.

Summer, 1974 (possibly 1975): I went to the Botanic Gardens to see if any of my mates were there, and they weren't. So, I want to the café to get an ice cream, but being a 10-year old bookworm decided to look at the novels in the rotary racks they had just inside the door. I would have been looking for some science-fiction, but what I found was The Rats!

I'd never read a "proper" horror story before, so why I picked this, I'm not sure. Could I have seen either of the "rat-horror" films Willard or Ben by this time? I'm not sure they would have got to TV that quickly. Maybe I'd seen a review of one of them in a horror movie magazine (House of Hammer, maybe?) that one of my friends used to get from his older brother? Whatever the impetus, I bought Herbert's book.

I knew that my dad wouldn't have allowed me to read a book of this type, so I resolved to read it all in one go before going home from the park. I found myself a secluded spot on the disused railway embankment just outside the park fence and settled down.

I think I was fairly well enthralled by the horror elements of the story, but most vividly I remember being appalled by the gratuitous sexual content. Being a very naïve pre-teen I was rather shocked, but steadfastly read through to the end of the book. Well, clearly, my instinct not to take it home had been correct, and I definitely did not want to keep it so, for the first and last time, I threw away a book (I've given them away and sold them, but have never just thrown one away): responsibly, of course, using a litter bin. I was staunchly anti-littering thanks to the Keep Britain Tidy campaign

And so this is why I've never read another "proper" horror book: No more Herbert; no Stephen King (actually, maybe one Richard Laymon, but I can't remember which, so it obviously didn't impress), etc. Since then, it's been Shelley, Stoker, Lovecraft, Hodgson and their ilk for me.

The Rats was certainly a formative, if not to say transformative, book for me, but probably not in the way the author might have wished.

[john257hopper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

James Herbert's first novel, read in light of his recent death. It's a taut and very simple horror story, written in a style now familiar, with a great many minor characters introduced very quickly only to be horribly killed (though most of these are given back stories, in one or two cases very long, so they are not just ciphers); but there are only two or three real characters throughout. Quite nice to see that the hero is a classroom teacher! Seminal and gripping stuff.One minor aspect that struck me was the unremarked upon presence of bombsites in East London, still intact 25 or more years after the war.

[loki7_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

James Herbert's first novel, a tale of giant, mutant rats terrorizing London is much better than this description makes it sound.

[runner56_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The original and still one of the best horror stories ever written...and still in print!

[goodwillbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a good formula horror book. Icky, familiar creatures mutated to something worse; a hero protagonist; lots of gore; and an ambiguous ending. I thought it was fun.

[devenish_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Still remains ,for me, by far the best of james Herbert's books.It really is Horror at it's very best.

[juniper_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

In an early scene, a gay salesman is drinking himself into a stupor over his lost gay lover. His heartache is only alleviated when his flesh is ripped from his body by a ravenous horde of bloodthirsty rats! In lesser hands this character and this scene might have come across as absurdly cliched, but Herbert depicts the harrowing events in beautifully nuanced prose: "The rats had had their fill of his body, but were still hungry. So they searched. Search for more food of the same kind. They had tasted their first human blood." (p. 15)Note the MASTERFUL FORESHADOWING!! And true to the promise of those first sublime pages, the book only gets BETTER AND BETTER!