Confronting Spider the Rat King is so horrifying, it robs some of the Clan of their speech and sentience. This is also the fate of Ginger, a talking cat in The Last Battle, when he comes face to face with the demon/god Tash. It means we can break into their shed and solve the mystery of the bootlace tails!’ said Malicia. She gave Maurice a critical look. ‘Of course, it would be more … satisfying if we were four children and a dog, which is the right number for an adventure, but we’ll make do with what we’ve got.’

As in all of Pratchett’s books, though, there is a lot going on besides talking rats and some dubiously naïve villagers. This is also one of his darker outings, which again makes me wonder about this being marketed to wee ones, unless Pratchett in his INFINITE AND IMPRESSIVE GENIUS makes that point, it is the young ones who can still get the irony of sentient rats pretending to be led away by a fake flutist. Karen Usher, who chaired the panel of Carnegie judges, declared that the selection was unanimous: "This is an outstanding work of literary excellence–a brilliant twist on the tale of the Pied Piper that is funny and irreverent, but also dark and subversive." [1] [2]Laxative Prank: Malicia puts laxative powder in the Rat Catchers' tea, then tells them they've been poisoned and holds the antidote hostage until they do as she says. The "antidote" is laxative powder too.

A Bloody Mess: Maurice is searching for the lost Dangerous Beans and Peaches when he discovers a trail of red liquid, which he follows to find... the rats' copy of Mr. Bunnsy, lying abandoned in a puddle of water and leaking red ink. He notes that this is, in its way, just as disturbing as finding the body of one of the rats, because Peaches and Dangerous Beans take great care of the book and the fact that it's been abandoned means something dire must have happened to them. Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: "No rat shall kill another rat" is one of Dangerous Beans' newer ideas. Inverted by Spider, who feels that rats that kill and eat each other encourages survival of the fittest (slaves). Once that has been done, the rats emerge, offering to tell the humans where to find the stolen food and money, in return for living peacefully with them. Maurice negotiates, selling the humans a promise of a brighter future, with the rats as a tourist attraction. Keith stays on as the town's piper, and the town becomes a tourist attraction, as Maurice predicted, and everybody remarks on how clean the place is. The book is funny, but more importantly, characters surprise us with their depth. Darktan, the toolbelt-swathed engineering-wizard rat, has a crisis of faith about his role as a leader. Other rats in his Clan are hammering out rules for ethical living, much to sharpster Maurice's disgust. I remember being given a copy of Reaper Man when I was a wee boy. When Death took on the prototype mechanical harvester, my first major author-crush began and it's never let-up.When the rats get philosophical about what happens after you die, one rat is being expressively sceptical and doubting everything. His name turns out to be Tomato, which makes him a Doubting Tom. Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Sardines is the quirkiest and most eccentric of the rats, always laughing and joking and dancing everywhere. While other rats don't always take him seriously, they can't deny that he, in many ways because of his quirks, is exceptionally good at what he does. Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Some details about rats, mentioned in the author's notes: he says he had to leave out some stuff that was too implausible for fiction.

Expy: At first glance, and indeed at second glance, Maurice can come across as one for Gaspode the Wonder Dog; Maurice's Origin Story is similar to Gaspode's second origin (normal stray animals made intelligent from exposure to magical garbage - indirectly in Maurice's case), they're both, on the whole, smarter than the humans they hang out with and use similar tactics in manipulating said humans, and they are both masters of snide and sarcastic comments. As the story goes on, however, it turns out that despite similar set-ups and circumstances, the two animals are actually very different when it comes down to it — where Gaspode is ultimately a pessimist who loves to wallow in self-pity and set himself up as a tragic hero, Maurice has a more positive outlook on life and is a lot more unashamedly a self-centered Jerk with a Heart of Gold— with a bit of a Dark and Troubled Past. Although, given how Gaspode mentions that other animals were affected by the magical garbage, the rats' intelligence comes from the same source. No Name Given: The Rat Catchers are always referred to as Rat Catcher 1 and 2, though their names are mentioned in passing. Also Keith is only "the stupid-looking kid" for the first few chapters because none of the other characters bothered to learn his name. The rats set about planning their offensive, led by Darktan, their general, while Maurice and Keith, the piper, look around. They are surprised to find that while the buildings are expensively built, the people have little food, and rats are hunted far more viciously than anywhere else. Maurice and Keith meet Malicia, the mayor's daughter, who is a story teller (her grandmother and great aunt were the Sisters Grim). She soon discovers that Maurice can talk, and meets Sardines, a tap-dancing rat who is the most daring of the group. While talking to her, Maurice reveals that the rat-catchers have been passing off boot-laces as rat tails (for which they are paid 50 pence each). Spider is interested in Dangerous Beans; other rats he can control, but Dangerous Beans has a mind similar to his: one that thinks for others. Dangerous Beans refuses Spider's offer of jointly ruling, as Spider wants to wage war on humans. As this happens, Malicia and Keith, under Spider's control, are about to set free the trapped rats. Spider tries to destroy Dangerous Beans' mind; this is felt by his army of rats, and Maurice. Dangerous Beans is able to resist, but Maurice reverts to being a cat, and the cat instinct tells him to pounce on Spider, though enough of his mind remains to tell him to sever the knot in Spider's tails. Rat King: The true villain of the story. Spider, so-called because it's made from eight young rats (eight being a number of great occult significance on the Discworld), has psychic powers so potent it can not only control rats and see anything they can see, but also influence human behaviour. It can even strip away the magical awareness given to the protagonist rats and cat, making them ordinary creatures. Horribly, making a Rat King is part of the qualification for mastery in the Ratcatchers Guild, suggesting that there are at least potentially many of these things across the Disc - though it's hinted that this one is unusual in that it achieved sentience, let alone Psychic Powers.

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At the end of the novel, Maurice leaves his rodents behind and finds a child to whom he asks "Hey, stupid looking kid. You wanna be lord mayor? No, down here kid" and goes off to start a new adventure.

Funny Animal: A deconstruction. Being able to talk doesn't make the rats that much like humans; they can't wear waistcoats, they instinctively eat their dead, mark things by widdling on them, and practically everything in the world is out to get them. The Ratcatchers themselves have a variant going, extorting money from the town to "get rid of" a plague of rats that don't exist, except in their own rat-breeding cages. Of course, they're pawns of the Rat King. Talk to the paw, mister, 'cos the whiskers don't want to know" is a take off on comedian Martin Lawrence's 1990s line which became a popular and short lived insult then, "Talk to the hand, because the ears ain't listening" When it gets it right, which is 95% of the time, it is 120% right. I was blown away by the depth of the themes in this "children's" book; philosophical musing on the meaning of sentience and existence, with some bits about leadership, stories, nature vs. nurture, some other stuff. (I'm not great on themes.) A movie based on this book was released last year; I can't imagine they got those parts right, but maybe?Beastly Bloodsports: One of the central conflicts involves the terrier rings where the terriers compete to kill the greatest number of rats. Went to the Great X in the Sky: Some of the rats have a tentative belief that on death the Bone Rat sends them to be with the Big Rat Deep Under the Ground.