Domain

"The man-made caverns shuddered but resisted the unleashed pressure from the world above. Sections collapsed, others were flooded, but the main body of tunnels withstood the impacts that pounded the city.
And after a while, the silence returned.
Save for the scurrying of many, many clawed feet."

So, the first book in the series, The Rats, dealt with a plague of giant black rats with a taste for blood, rampaging through London. The second, Lair placed the descendants of these rats, four years later, in Epping Forest, with a similar outcome. Domain is rather different; it opens with a devastating nuclear strike on London that shatters the city, kills most of the population and drives the survivors underground out of the reach of the nuclear show more fallout that follows. Meanwhile, in the tunnels under the city, those pesky giant rats have been hiding, multiplying and biding their time...

Our hero this time around is a rugged helicopter pilot called Steve Culver. He drags a stranger - a man named Alex Dealey, who just happens to be a government agent - out of harm's way during the strike, and en route to the official shelter Dealey knows to be nearby, also saves a young woman, Kate, from the earliest ratty carnage in the tunnels of the London Underground. Naturally, she and Steve develop an interest in each other, and Dealey's connections prove helpful... so far so obvious.

What I wasn't expecting was for the focus to be so political. It's quite a departure from the previous formula of 'unsuspecting person attacked - another unsuspecting person attacked - escalating carnage - investigation - crisis - resolution'. In fact, given the whole 'nuclear holocaust' thing, the rats are fairly low down on the characters' list of problems, at least until much closer to the end. A lot of the plot is given over to the ramifications of the attack - avoiding the nuclear fallout, government provision for survival, scoping out the remains of the city, attempting to communicate with other official shelters across London - rather than to the ratty menace.

Of course, as the novel goes on the rats' presence definitely increases. A horrific scene inside the government shelter (one of those where you literally can't imagine how it can end well for ANYBODY) paves the way for a group of survivors to return to the surface, where there is more scope for interaction with other people as well as encounters with the rats. From this point the pace is much quicker, the chapters more brutal, and the double climax arrives with a satisfying dose of adrenaline-fuelled horror.

Although I'm not a huge fan of political thrillers and relentlessly bleak adventure stories, I enjoyed this trilogy finale, mostly because of the dystopian premise and the closer focus on a larger cast of key characters than Herbert perhaps felt the need to offer in the previous two installments. I did think at times that a glimmer of hope might have been nice - there were moments when it felt like I was reading my way through a nightmare. One of those where you KNOW there's no way out and no matter how hard you try the predators are going to get you in the end. Mentally I occasionally wanted to do the inevitable 'give up, turn and face the bad guys, then at least I can wake up' thing. Buuuut I kept going, because unlike a nightmare, the end was going to come eventually, and I wanted to know how the hell this little group were going to defeat the rats, and what had become of England on a wider scale after London was destroyed... I'm glad I finished up the series, even if this third book was a bit of a departure from the previous two! show less

They're dropping nukes, it's the end of the road, hide in the bunkers - wait. Why are the bomb shelters filled with rats?

Aw hell, here we go again.

At least I'm leaning so far into the rats winning that I no longer really care about the humans. At this point let them win. They've earned it.

Also it's now I realize this is not a trilogy but a quadrilogy. I expected this to be the end, but alas, it is not. I'm not sure how it can keep going from here. I guess I'll have to find out.

Rats, rats everywhere, giant mutant rats as big as dogs... If postnuclear London wasn't bad enough, for Steve Culver et. al. there are these giant mutant rats leftover from Herbert's previous two novels to deal with. And rabid dogs, and crazy people too.

Setting the story in a post apocalyptic world lets Herbert free himself from any of the kind of plausibility boundaries that held the previous two volumes in the Rat trilogy back. Herbert can just let his imagination go. In addition, Herbert's prose and metaphor have improved significantly beyond the "see spot run" that marred particularly the first volume: [b:The Rats|397867|The Rats (Rats, #1)|James Herbert|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356454885s/397867.jpg|2452726].

Page turning show more thrills and decently drawn characters (he's still not as good as King or McCammon) make the rollercoaster a fun ride. Throw in a little anti-war, anti-government trashing and you've got a pretty good entertainment here. Herbert also forgoes the salacious matters that caused the earlier novels to wander a little.

This Centipede Press edition follows the original 1985 US text while most versions still in print follow later revisions that, well, have more words, but aren't necessarily better. This goes for the current e-book and Audible editions. The edition itself is beautifully produced with nasty little illustrations here and there and a great dust jacket. show less

Five nuclear bombs explode above. The mutant black rats swarm below. And the English people who survived the bombs, may have only done so to be meals for vermin!

Decent premise, but not the "Rats" sequel I wanted. This one is mostly about surviving the nuclear holocaust, with just a little bit of the rats thrown in at the end. I just wanted to read about the rats from the first two books. So I didn't really like this book. Boo. If you liked the first two books, like I did, skip this one.

Absolutely loved the final part of the rats trilogy, based during war time the use of the underground tunnels and the feeling of isolation and desperation was at times unnerving.
My favourite of the trilogy. Fantastic story

It is well-writen but I couldn't keep reading of rats attacks.

A post-nuclear London, plus flesh eating mutant rats. What's not to like!?