Imagine Pinky and the Brain, minus the comedy, plus lots and lots of gore
Rats are fast learners, can survive on almost any food, can adapt to almost every climate, can squeeze into almost any space, and reproduce amazingly fast. The number of rats in the world is around the same as the total human population.
Fear the day they organize.
In the novel Wrath, written as a collaboration between a PhD geneticist and a veteran horror author, a cutting-edge biotech company has—sigh—disrupted the fancy pet market. After launching a series of transgenic novelties such as pretty glowing fish, chattier parrots, and ponies that are more pleasant to ride (not to mention a few off-the-books critters for the US Army), its newest creation is sure to catapult it to financial superstardom: a breed of rats with human genes for intelligence. Rat voices are too high-pitched for the human ear, so these smart rats come with a tablet app for them to type their thoughts. It’s the perfect companion for anyone who ever wished their pet could talk back.
Somehow the genius techbro didn’t expect the smart rat to form an opinion on the ethics of animal experimentation.
It’s become difficult to write a compelling techbro without resorting to the same tics of personality that we all know and hate. Our fancy pet salesman Noah is interchangeable with every other techbro you’ve met: a proud workaholic with a short temper, a monumental ego and no tether to the real world. If he sets a launch date for a new product, it absolutely must be met, quality control be damned. In several flashbacks (which could have been placed at better locations in the novel to improve its pacing), we learn about his scary, violent childhood and the small town life he left behind to dedicate himself to making piles and piles of money. Now he has everything, but he feels chronically dissatisfied because he never learned to connect to other people, and he simply doesn’t register the humanity of anyone on a lower income bracket. He spent his youth grinding his way to the top of the food chain, and now sits there alone.
His accomplice in the fancy pet business is Sienna, a genetic engineer who believes in the mission of improving animals with almost religious zeal. She has invented a practically flawless technique of gene editing that gives much more predictable results than CRISPR, so whereas Noah is the public face that gives carefully tested speeches to move the masses toward needing more transgenic pets, Sienna is the brains of the operation. Unfortunately, her backstory is rather uninspired: her obsession with curing her infertility strained her marriage to its breaking point, and now she makes creatures in the lab to replace the children she can’t have. It’s tiresome that in the 21st century, in a novel that isn’t about motherhood, the only prominent female character is defined entirely by her desire for motherhood. More attention could have been given to her world-saving ambitions, which are only mentioned in a mocking tone.
Another point of view we follow is that of Prez, an experienced rat catcher who ends up employed as chief of security at Noah’s lab and always has relevant rat-related trivia to contribute when the story needs to explain a concept to the reader.
And then we have a lucky random passerby: Dallas, a boy whose miscalibrated hearing aids allow him to hear the transgenic rats’ high-pitched pleas for help. After finding himself in the right place at the right time, he rescues the star specimen that Noah was planning to showcase at a huge event, with two main consequences: Noah’s company suffers a costly public humiliation, and the smart rat gets a quick tour of how badly we’ve been treating other species. When this rat makes contact with the millions of fellow rats that inhabit New York, humankind’s thus far uncontested supremacy will topple.
The novel is practically divided in two parts, before and after Dallas rescues this rat. In the first part, we follow Noah’s despotic rule over his tiny kingdom, peppered with too many flashbacks that flesh out characterization at the cost of an awkward narrative rhythm. In the second part, we’re introduced to the rat as another narrator, a voice whose quickly growing intelligence is skillfully conveyed via increasingly complex sentences. The eventual revenge of ratkind takes up a lengthy portion of the book, and it generously splatters the page with countless slit throats, torn ears, ripped fingers, gouged eyes, and furry wave after furry wave of unrelenting, methodical, sharp-toothed hatred.
The way the conflict resolves feels a bit too convenient, almost frictionless, but it doesn’t erase the effect on the reader’s mind of the horrible images of a New York overrun with gray blankets of rats filling the streets and mutilating any human body they find. Next time you meet a rat in the city, maybe try to not give it a reason to hold a grudge against you. Who knows what secret conversations they’re having in the sewers.
Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.
Reference: Moalem, Shäron and Kraus, Daniel. Wrath [Union Square & Co., 2022].
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
