#150 in Horror
The Rats
- 188
- Pages
- about 3.5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“The Rats” is James Herbert’s lean, graphic debut, a horror novel that turns a plague of killer rats into genuine scares. Herbert intercuts the main story with brief portraits of the victims, and the deaths are spelled out in unsparing detail. Some readers point out homophobic and misogynist touches of its era, along with a hero who leers at teenage girls.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Rats (1974) is a horror novel by British writer James Herbert. This was Herbert's first novel and included graphic depictions of death and mutilation.
Reading order · Rats
Full order & progress →- The RatsThis book
7.57.5 / 10 - Lair
–Not ranked yet - Domain
–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.4 across 74 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 33% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Horror average of 7.5. That is how 7.5 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 7.4 | 74 | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Rats?
It has 188 pages — shorter than 87% of the ranked books in Horror.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Horror — with scores between 7.5 and 8.0, closest to this book.
