Perdido Street Station

In the gigantic megacity of New Crobuzon—seemingly plucked from the pens of Kafka and Dickens, with Bosch and Neal Stephenson acting as intermediaries—people and bug-headed hepers, mermaids and water-spirits, hand-made mutated creatures and cactus-people exist side by side. Everyone is busy with their own business: the hepers sculpt statues from colored spit, drug dealers sell drowsy dope, and the police chase dissidents.

And then the scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebula receives a wingless Garuda—a bird-man from far deserts—and asks him to teach him to fly again. Meanwhile, Isaac’s bug-headed lover, Lyn, receives an equally difficult assignment: to sculpt a portrait of a powerful mafia boss. Isaac and Lyn still don’t know what dangers these orders entail—for themselves, for the entire city, and even for the structure of the universe…