If you like your biblical end to the world stories then this is a great book to visit. No I am not giving anything away as its actually not related to biblical events more the reference to the sheer scale and number of catastrophic events that occur in this book. With The Rats, Herbert established himself as a master of the sort of apocalyptic horror that's so popular today – from Justin Cronin's The Passage to any number of zombie novels. There can be few authors working in the field of modern dystopian fiction who don't owe a debt to his work. James Herbert was Britain's number one bestselling writer (a position he held ever since publication of his first novel) and one of the world's top writers of thriller/horror fiction. This is the second in the famous Rats trilogy (in fact there is a forth called the City written 10 years after Domain but thats a different story - literally) From reading both, it’s obvious that trips aboard really scuttled James Herbert as a writer. Here he manages to conjure foreign locales with all the depth of a holiday brochure. Making it seem like the author had been to these places, but for two hours sight-seeing in between duty-free shopping. There’s zero depth to the portrayal, instead – in the various depictions of poor non-white people around the world – there is the unmistakable whiff of casual racism.

Herbert released a new novel virtually every year from 1974 to 1988, wrote six novels during the 1990s and released three new works in the 2000s. "I am very insecure about being a writer", he stated in the book Faces of Fear. "I don't understand why I am so successful. And the longer I stay that way, the better it's going to be, because that's what keeps me on the edge, striving if you like." Even the ending was decent, but that was probably because I spent the majority of the time wondering how the hell it was going to end, because there honestly seems to be absolutely no hope for the characters at all. To be frank, by the time we got to the perfunctory, rushed ending I had kind of lost my interest in it. But there’s all kinds of natural disasters and a sense that they’re all connected and it takes a grizzled scientist to work out what’s going on, and to stop an evil witch from New Orleans who’s thrown into the mix for some reason. This novel is by far the better when it comes to plot and character building. Gone are the over the top sex scenes that just distracted you from the story in the previous books, the violence and gore thabkfully remain.As with many classics, and don’t dare suggest the Rats series is anything but, you’ve got some mental hoops to jump. Here there are touches of racism, though rare, and there’s misogyny, subtle and screaming, both not so rare. Mostly, these are eye roll moments that demonstrate a period in the not-so-distant past. Climb over these altogether, or note them and move on, and you’ve got a pretty fun ride. No puedo entender por qué Herbert lo publicó. Es MUY inferior al promedio, incluso para estándares de comic. Supongo que debe haber estado realmente desesperado por dinero, porque es la única razón entendible para que esta *cosa* sea publicada. Personaje inrelacionable, visuales horribles, casi inexistente trama. Tristemente puedo decir que vi cosas peores, pero no muchas. Evadir a cualquier costo. So, I seem to make a massive mistake when it comes to James Herbert books, specifically ones to do with his "The Rats" trilogy...

The third, and final book (not including the graphic novel that I'm probably not going to read), concludes the horror that is The Rats. Although I enjoyed the story generally, and the sort of short stories that interconnected with our main character, Culver, I found this to be pretty disappointing when comparing it to the first and second book, and feel like I could have got away with out reading it. The tale begins with the unleashing of five nuclear weapons upon the busy streets of England’s capital city of London. With the city now reduced to rubble and the highly toxic fallout dust still in the air, a small group of survivors have found refuge in one of the many underground government bunkers that are dotted around the city.I think a large part of it was that I enjoyed these characters more than I enjoyed the characters from the first book. Whilst we do have one character from the prior book in this one, and references are made to the events of book one, it was nice to be introduced to a fresh cast. It was only a little thing, but I do believe it played a big part in my enjoyment. Etchison, Dennis, ed. (1991a). Masters of Darkness III. New York City: Tor Books. ISBN 978-0-8125-1766-8.