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I'm sure there's a point to the rave being called "Junglist Terror" and the section being called "Jung List Terror", but I don't know enough about Carl Jung... Somebody explain it for me!

Loplop, Anansi, King Rat and Saul (Jungian archetypes?) converge on the scene of the rave, along with their spider and rat troops. Why? Saul's difficulty freeing the rats from the boom-box in the previous section should have clued him in that he's really better off confronting Pete without the rats.

During their fight, Pete calls himself "the Lord of the Dance". Well, now, there's a religious (Christian) song of that title, and also Shiva is Lord of the Dance in Hinduism, so I went to . The lyricist, Sydney Carter, wrote: "I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality." Hmmm.

I love the moment of realization, when Saul realizes that he can be affected by the piper's music, but he can no longer be controlled by it. "I'm more than the sum of my parts." As, of course, we all are.

Even after their victory, King Rat is completely unrepentant. �"The children�" [says Saul] King Rat nodded sharply. "The little fuckers whose parents clapped us out of town," he spat.� When Saul asks if he killed Pete, he's unsure, but a few minutes later he's convinced himself that he did. "I took him out. Not you, you froze up." I guess that's a matter of point of view. Certainly, Saul stopped attacking Pete, but I like to think it was because he saw the rescue of the children as more important, while King Rat couldn't care less about them - in fact thinks they got what they deserved. To him, the sins of the fathers certainly have to be paid for by their children.

He does introduce us to one last bit of rhyming slang: "I sprung up with my sharp Hampsteads…[teeth]"

Now, generally, I prefer authors not to let their politics invade their novels, but you just have to love the high camp socialism of Miéville's epilogue. Well done, Citizen Rat.

Yeah, the ending was pretty obvious, wasn't it? I'll do a bit of research on the Jung thing. Jung was very much into dreams, symbolism and yes, as you mentioned, Derek, archetypes, of course. ...though I'm finding it hard to try and fit the bird, the spider and the rat into any of the Jungian archetypes; maybe they are just mythological creatures after all--but then yes, we need a way to try and make Jung fit in.

Might I mention that according to Wikipedia, the Lord of the Dance: "is a depiction of the god Shiva as the cosmic dancer who performs his divine dance to destroy a weary universe and make preparations for the god Brahma to start the process of creation."
...in other words, a destructive force.

Ah, but Shiva is never just a destructive force.

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Ah, but Shiva is never just a destructive force."

Sure, but in his guise as specifically Nataraja or Nataraj, The Lord (or King) of Dance, he seems to be?

Maybe I'm being to literal in my read of this, but I just didn't like the ending - especially in terms of action. We had already seen how the piper had made King Rat dance to death a bunch of his rats so to see it repeated, which it had to be repeated as that's all the piper does, well, I expected something else. How he almost got Saul with the mixture of piping via the jungle beat was interesting, though. But way back in the Natasha times you knew he was planning something that absolutely relied on the style of music.

My favorite part was the epilogue. And Saul's answer to King Rat's pathetic plea is how any of us would react emotionally, and I liked that Saul carried through on it - not through any sort of intense or reasoned revenge but just plain "no, you don't get your way, the world is not yours, your selfishness has a cost" way. And the socialist-inspired "revolution" was a nice icing on that cake ... "Let's put the rat back into fraternity." I had quite forgotten about his father until that point. I agree with Derek ... Citizen Rat!

All in all, now after finishing it, I'm glad I read it. But it's not my favorite. For some reason, I liked the beginning better, maybe because I didn't know anything or about the underworld or what would happen yet. Or the writing seemed to be better without all the latter half's action. Once past Kay's death it seemed to be somewhat repetitive. Now, if they had had the final battle then...

Still, this section has one of my favorite lines of imagery, when Saul is going to face the piper: "He poked his head upside-down into the hall, breaking the surface tension of the music hall and immersing himself in it."

I kept imagining this little bug on a huge lake, its legs bending the water until it pops through, and must fight for its life to get back. Superb!

I too, had expected a bit more of a twist in the ending, in terms of that Saul's party would have had some clever plan to foil The Piper's plans. I didn't like that they simply blindly walked into the Piper's obvious traps with nothing, no tricks up their sleeve... Derek may argue KR was dumb, but I would have expected more from Saul. Oh well...