History Literature / BasLagCycle

* MegaCity: New Crobuzon is enormous enough to be considered its own ''state'', and is even at war with another city in ''Iron Council''.

* PhantasySpelling: China Mieville employs this trope heavily in the Bas-Lag Cycle -- vampirs, alchymy, chymistry, elyctricity...

* BloodyMurder: The scabmettlers of are a race whose blood clots extremely quickly. Before going into battle, they cut themselves in certain ritualistic pattern, and the results blood flows harden into armor and weapons. BlessedWithSuck to some extent, since they need to medicate themselves constantly or risk spontaneous clots that will turn them into statues.

* EldritchLocation: Anywhere that has a noticeable amount of Torque. The ruins of Suroch are stated to be like this, courtesy of a past war with New Crobuzon, but the Cacotopic Stain is the place that gets the most screen time in the series.

** Beyond that, New Crobuzon has a term for all non-human residents, "Xenians." Many races are also explicitly stated to live in ghettos, including the Creekside Khepri ghetto and the Cactacae Glass House.

* EldritchLocation: Anywhere that has a noticeable amount of Torque. The ruins of Suroch are stated to be like this, courtesy of a past war with New Crobuzon, but the Cacotopic Stain is the place that gets the most screen time in the series.

* Suddenly eldest syndrome: ''Perdido Street Station's'' Construct Council is revealed to have been completely destroyed in the intervening years between the first book and ''Iron Council.'' The "Construct War," didn't take long in-universe (a few weeks) and gets about a paragraph of description.

* AuthorAppeal Miéville likes monsters, and collects the TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Monster Manuals in spite of no longer playing D&D.

* AuthorTract: ''Iron Council'' is said to be particularly [[{{Anvilicious}} demonstrative]] of [[ChinaMieville Miéville's]] socialist politics.
* AuthorVocabularyCalendar: its by ChinaMieville, so If there aren't a dozen five-dollar words on the page -- you're probably looking at the title page.

* MachineWorship: The Construct Council in ChinaMieville's ''PerdidoStreetStation''. A massive AI in a scrapyard with worshipers. However it still has to communicate through a dead body hooked up to it. [[spoiler: As they leave Isaac notes that for the spokesperson to work, they must have ''been alive'' when they were hooked up.]] Also in the gap between this and the sequels ''Literature/TheScar'' and ''Literature/IronCouncil'', there is a [[RobotWar purging of all constructs]] from the city for fear of what they could become.

* PhantasySpelling: ChinaMieville employs this trope heavily in the Bas-Lag Cycle -- vampirs, alchymy, chymistry, elyctricity...

** A former girlfriend of Isaac, Bellis Coldwine, flees Bas-Lag by ship shortly after the events of ''Perdido Street Station''. Not long after departure, Bellis' ship is captured by the forces of the pirate nation known as Armada. Most of the novel deals with events surrounding Armada's journey to an unstable and dangerous region of the seas known as ''the Scar''.

** A former girlfriend of Isaac, Bellis Coldwine, flees Bas-Lag by ship shortly after the events of Perdido Street station. Not long after departure, Bellis' ship is captured by the forces of the pirate nation known as Armada. Most of the novel deals with events surrounding Armada's journey to an unstable and dangerous region of the seas known as ''the Scar''.

** Twenty years after the events of PerdidoStreetStation, renegade railway workers, collectively known as the Iron Council, threaten the iron-fisted government control over the city-state of New Crobuzon. New Crobuzon is currently in a state of war with the rival city, Tesh, and events in New Crobuzon suggest that a large-scale revolt is on the verge of breaking loose.

** A scientist named Isaac Dan Der Grimnebulin is commissioned by the wingless Garuda, Yagharek, to find a way to enable him to fly again. In Isaac's search for an solution, he unwittingly releases a monster in the city of New Crobuzon.

** A former girlfriend of Isaac, Bellis Coldwine, flees Bas-Lag by ship shortly after the events of Perdido Street station. Not long after departure, Bellis' ship is captured by the forces of the pirate nation known as Armada. Most of the novel deals with events surrounding Armada's journey to an unstable and dangerous region of the seas known as ''The Scar''.

** Twenty years after the events of PerdidoStreetStation, renegade railway workers, collectively known as The Iron Council, threaten the iron-fisted government control over the city-state of New Crobuzon. New Crobuzon is currently in a state of war with the rival city, Tesh, and events in New Crobuzon suggest that a large-scale revolt is on the verge of breaking loose.

* AuthorVocabularyCalendar: ChinaMieville uses the word "concatenate" and its derivatives too often in ''Literature/IronCouncil''. It only comes up a few times, but it's such an unusual word that it stands out.
** "Concatenate" is a very useful word. Too many people say "add" when they mean "concatenate". There would be must less confusion in the world if people became familiar with it.
** There's also his frequent use of "puissance" (the most common term for magical energy in the setting). His entire brain appears to be an Author Vocabulary Calendar, to the extent that it requires a dictionary -- a large dictionary -- to tell which words are obscure technical terms, which ones are Britishisms, and which ones he made up out of whole cloth. If there aren't a dozen five-dollar words on the page -- you're probably looking at the title page.
** Miéville uses tons of very obscure words to describe landscapes. If you've taken a few geology classes, you'll know most of these (and that they're [[YouKeepUsingThatWord not always correct]]), but you've never seen as many instances of words like "graben" or "arete". Most notable in ''Iron Council''.
** There are more instances of "inveigled" (often not particularly correct uses) in ''PerdidoStreetStation'' than you a person is likely to see in the rest of his or her life.
** The same book also includes several uses of "etiolated" -- actually accurate in context, but used in a context that doesn't actually give much of a clue to the word's meaning.
** Ditto for "vertiginous".

** It is ruled by different castes of the dead, the highest being the thanati. They're described as liches with their mouths sewn shut.

* FantasticRacism: ''Nobody'' likes vampires. Not even the other undead ([[InsistentTerminology who would actually be rather upset about you referring to vampires as proper undead]]). About the best they can hope for is pitying tolerance or respectful fear, and it's more likely to be the former.

** The ab-dead are stronger and faster than the living. They have forked tongues and can move almost imperceptibly in shadow. They heal quickly and do not age. Sunlight does not kill them immediately, especially older and stronger vampires, but it severely harms them and prolonged exposure ''will'' kill the ab-dead. Vampirism is caused by a virus in their saliva, and although infection is not guaranteed, repeated direct feedings can cause a human to become ab-dead.

*** Ab-dead is just the term for undead, in keeping with the frequent use of the prefix ab- instead of un- in the Bas-Lag books. Vampires are just one form. As noted, in High Cromlech the ab-dead rule, but the vampires, kind of considered not real ab-dead because of their parasitic nature, are on the lowest social rung.

* LaserGuidedKarma: Deconstructed by the Remade. For example, a woman who smothers her baby has her baby's arms attached to her face so that she'll never forget what she did.

* DeathWorld: [[Literature/{{Bas-LagCycle}} Bas-Lag]] is pretty inhospitable on the whole, but it also contains at least two kinds of its own {{Death World}}s. The first kind have high levels of a cancerous force known as Torque, while the second is a huge wound in the world where eldritch beings crossed over from another plane.