Perdido Street Station (Bas-Lag #1) (2001) by China Miéville

Perdido Street Station is the winner of our October 18 fantasy poll!

WINNER OF THE AUGUST DERLETH AND ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDS

A masterpiece brimming with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and fierce characters, from the author who “has reshaped modern fantasy” (The Washington Post)

The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the center of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural effluent and foundries pound into the night. For a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militias have ruled over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, crooks, and junkies.

Now a stranger has arrived, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand. And something unthinkable is released.

The city is gripped by an alien terror. The fate of millions lies with a clutch of renegades. A reckoning is due at the city’s heart, in the vast edifice of brick and wood and steel under the vaults of Perdido Street Station.

It is too late to escape.

“Flawlessly plotted and relentlessly, stunningly inventive: a conceptual breakthrough of the highest order.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Miéville's canvas is so breathtakingly broad that the details of individual subplots and characters sometime lose their definition. But it is also generous enough to accommodate large dollops of aesthetics, scientific discussion and quest fantasy in an impressive and ultimately pleasing epic." - Publisher's Weekly

"While Tolkienesque fantasy allows readers to enjoy the conservative values of a world where the Return of the King is a good thing, Miéville is intent on describing a radical fantasy where power functions most often to oppress and control." - The Guardian