I came into this expecting uninspired camp, but it was better than I thought, though still not stellar. It's unoriginal (the plot is a mash of NIMH and Ben) but for a "swarm of killer animals taking vengeance" story it's fairly well-done. The first bit was hard to get through. The main characters are workers at the lab who torture the rats, immediately unlikable. Which is fine, but the story's attempts to make them unlikable in an interesting way fell flat for me. I didn't find their backstories or motivations compelling at all.

The most potentially interesting was one of the character's beliefs in uplifting other animals, but this isn't explored deeply or how she justifies the constant murders of the rats if she believes animals deserve to be given uplifted abilities for their own sakes. I only got invested when it switched to Sammy, the rat, as protagonist.

There's long sections written in his first-person perspective, and these are by far the best parts of the novel. He grows in intelligence throughout, and we see it from the way his syntax and thoughts evolve, in a similar style to Flowers for Algernon. His arc was the only truly interesting one, so it's good he was the main character. He isn't an evil rat, but rather someone who cares so deeply about others he sees a violent uprising as the only way to put a stop to humanity's oppression of other animals, though he also violently uses non-sapient rats achieve these ends. He is a "revolutionary gone too far" more than a "crazed evil murderer," and I appreciate the book took animal liberation seriously, as well as used the rats as actual characters rather than a horror plot device.

A rat staging an organized rebellion after browsing footage from vegan hashtags, and this plot being taken sympathetically and seriously by the narrative has got to count for something. Again I don't think this book was all that impressive, the characters mostly fall very flat, but for whatever reason I really loved Sammy. Maybe I was only so interested in him bc he's a rat, or bc animal liberation is such a core issue to me. But it did have me staying up late hooked to see what happened to him, so I've got to give credit. I think this is a "that one character from an otherwise forgettable media" case.