City of the Rats
core novel 2000 Deltora Quest
Record
| First published | 2000 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.97 (11,828 ratings, collected 2026-08-27) |
| Page count | 132 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781865042275 |
| Internal chronology | 3 |
Synopsis
City of the Rats is the third book in the Deltora Quest series. Having already recovered two of the seven gems, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine travel to Noradz, the City of the Rats, in search of the opal, and find a settlement governed by rigid customs of enforced cleanliness and obedience under its rulers, the Ra-Kacharz. When Lief's small companion Filli is mistaken for a rat, the rulers force Lief into a dangerous card game with his life at stake, which he survives through a clever trick that earns the group life imprisonment rather than execution. A sympathetic local girl named Tira helps them escape through the city's refuse tunnels, and in fleeing they learn that the Ra-Kacharz secretly serve the Shadow Lord.
Where it sits
- Universe: Deltora Quest
- Series: Deltora Quest core; position 3 of 8 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Emily Rodda
Notes
- From the series record (Deltora Quest): Founding 8-book quest saga; the original Deltora Quest.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Deltora Quest: position 3 of 8: previous The Lake of Tears (2000) · next The Shifting Sands (2000)
- Internal chronology, within Deltora Quest: position 3 of 15: previous The Lake of Tears (2000) · next The Shifting Sands (2000)
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deltora_Quest_(book_series)
- https://deltoraquest.fandom.com/wiki/City_of_the_Rats_(book)
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