The Borribles

The Borribles books were unlike anything I'd ever encountered when I first read them at the age of 11. Dark, uncompromising, and very very bloody, they are nevertheless full of likable characters, loyalty, friendship and a way of life that every kid reading them would have loved to emulate.

The trilogy comprises The Borribles, The Borribles Go For Broke and Borribles : Across The Dark Metropolis. All three are available in a nice big chunky omnibus.

Basic not-too-spoilery plot is that the Borribles (street urchin types who steal to eat and squat in abandoned buildings) learn that the Rumbles (rat creatures that live on parks and commons, obvious Womble analogues) are planning to invade the urban territories. A pre-emptive strike is launched.

Said strike is the basis of the first book. Books 2 and 3, which need to be read back to back for the full effect, concern the repercussions on the Borrible way of life of one minor (but pivotal) event in the first book. These repercussions are large, and they are unpleasant.

You know how JK Rowling casually culled her characters in the last couple of Harry Potter books? Remember how everyone was all, "Oh, that's a bit nasty, that's a bit grim, that's a bit shocking for the little ones"? Well, The Borribles is like that, all of the time. The difference with this story though, (and I mean no disrespect to Rowling here, whose books I genuinely love) these characters are much better drawn, in a much shorter space of time, so each and every death ( and a couple of fates that are literally worse than death, in the context of the books) hit you like sledgehammer blows.

There are some very complex shifting moralities at play here too, with the closest thing the books have to a hero acting like anything but on a number of occasions whilst redemption (if not always rescue) is afforded the most unpleasant of people. It's a cliche, but the best villains don't see themselves as such and in these novels everyone has a motive for what they do, everyone believes themselves to be on the 'right' side. You'll often find yourself agreeing with them.

It seems the violence and ant-establishment themes (the Police don't come off particularly well) rubbed a few people up the wrong way (perhaps understandable in books aimed at children) and author Michael de Larrabeiti struggled to find a publisher for the third book. Whether this convinced him to wind up the series as a trilogy or whether that was the intention all along I don't know. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it, because while the Borribles and their culture were ripe for exploration, and might perhaps have had a much larger cultural influence had they appeared more often, the fact is that the ending we get, while not exactly fairytale, is a fitting and memorable cap to a sometimes harrowing, always worthwhile tale.

I could write page after page about these books but if I do I'll not be able to resist mentioning my favourite moments, all of which constitute massive spoilers so I'll leave it at this : a happy ending for the few, paid for with the blood of the many. If that sounds like your cup of tea, read The Borribles now.