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In the city of New Crobuzon, rogue scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is commissioned by a wingless bird-man to return his ability to fly. Isaac's artist girlfriend Lin, who has a beetle for a head, is commissioned by a crime lord to create a very special sculpture. Naturally, it all goes to hell.

Creator/ChinaMieville's sprawling monster-hunt, followed by related works ''Literature/TheScar'' and ''Literature/IronCouncil'' (different stories set in the [[Literature/{{Bas-LagCycle}} same world]]) gave a name to the NewWeird movement and provided a counterpoint to the long, dreary march of Tolkien rip-offs. They're also excellent examples of SteamPunk.

Compare Literature/{{Kraken}}, by the same author.

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!!!This book provides examples of:

* AcidTripDimension: The Worldweave as glimpsed by the Weaver's passengers
* ActionGirl: Averted. Derkhan is easily the most incompetent of the entire team, and also prone to bouts of hysteria. [[WildMassGuessing This must have been intentional]], as Mieville himself has said in interviews he's bound to deconstruct the usual tropes of fantastic fiction, and readers usually expect [[XenaWarriorPrincess Xena]]-like badassery from a woman who admitted to be a ButchLesbian.
** Derkhan's not that useful in a fight, but she's good at sneaking around. Pretty much any time she's needed to venture out in public to fetch something for The Team, she gets it safely.
* AlienSky: It is mentioned that the moon has two 'daughters' orbiting it.
* BadAss: Yagharek and Jack Half-a-Prayer fit the bill in the more classic sense of the term, though Isaac and Derkhan's sheer bravery despite possessing no combat training definitely qualify them too.
* BadassBookworm (Isaac, in spite of being a scientist, holds his own against the city's militia with some well-lobbed chemicals, not to mention taking on monsters that Hell itself was too scared to fight)
* BazaarOfTheBizarre: Aspic Hole.
* BigCreepyCrawlies: The khepri males and home-grubs. Isaac mentions the infeasibility of acquiring giant insect wings for Yagharek from an assassin beetle ("Get our arses kicked.").
* BizarreAlienSenses: The eyeless slake-moths can smell and taste the psychic energies of sentient creatures' dreams.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Most notably the Weavers, who don't have a sense of morality so much as they have a (very, very alien, to humans) sense of beauty.
* BodyHorror:
** The Remades. Oh God, the Remades...
** Don't forget Mr. Motley.
* BoisterousBruiser: Isaac, overlapping with GeniusBruiser.
* [[spoiler:BrokeYourArmPunchingOutCthulhu]]: A large part of the reason DiabolusExMachina is summoned.
* BuryYourGays: Oddly averted. In books where being a named character and being sympathetic/a decent human being is usually a recipe for death, and the named-protagonist body count runs into the double digits,[[spoiler: Derkhan]] manages to make it out mostly in one piece. [[HeroicBSOD Key word here being mostly]].
* ChekhovsGunman: [[spoiler:Toro]] is mentioned (though not by name) before [[spoiler:she]] becomes important.
** Also, in the first book they mention that the Ambassador from [[spoiler:Tesh]] is a [[spoiler:vagabond]] by custom, and in the last book this is important as the villain and source of impending arcane doom is [[spoiler:Spiral Jacobs, the vagabond]].
** Also true of [[spoiler: Jack Half-a-Prayer]] within this particular book.
* [[AIIsACrapshoot CIIsACrapshoot]]: Constructed Intelligence in a cleaning machine [[spoiler: and the Construct Council]]
* {{Clockpunk}}: The constructs, Isaac's calculating engines, and khepri "metaclockwork" devices like the stingbox.
* CollectorOfTheStrange: The Weaver collects scissors, and had previously collected chess sets. Isaac's vast collection of flying animals also qualifies.
* TheDandy: Lemuel Pidgeon.
* DangerousForbiddenTechnique: Even the New Crobuzon government -- y'know, those ever-so-responsible folks who [[spoiler: brought [[MacabreMothMotif slake-moths]] to the city in the first place and then sold them to a drug lord]] -- doesn't dare risk mucking around with Torque.
* DealWithTheDevil: Averted - the devil ''refuses''. See OhCrap.
* DeathWorld The Cacotopic Stain. Though death is honestly not that big of a deal compared to [[{{squick}} what else the place can do to you.]] Gone into more detail in Literature/IronCouncil.
* DidNotGetTheGirl: [[spoiler:Isaac & Lin]]
* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: The few characters who don't die trying to save the city/world suffer terrible personal loss. The worst thing is that a fairly happy ending could easily have occurred if a few crucial moments had played out differently. They just didn't.]]
* DownTheDrain: Plagued by biological monstrosities (byproducts of waste materials from research facilities), gang members, and the odd multi-planar GiantSpider makes the sewers uniquely dangerous in a city filled with danger already. Isaac etc. are appropriately intimidated when they find themselves in the sewer system, and must rely on Lemuel to avoid most certain danger.
* EldritchAbomination: Most notably the slake-moths, which literally ''feed on people's consciousness'', leaving them as utterly mindless shells. Even ''looking'' at them will destroy your consciousness. These creatures are so terrifying that when the government of New Crobuzon attempted to make a DealWithTheDevil to deal with them, ''hell refused to get involved''. There's also the Weaver, the creature the government turns to when the demons turn them down; it is a gigantic spider that exists between dimensions and is capable of traversing them as we would traverse down the street. It is also prone to doing things like cutting off the ears of everyone in the room, then repairing some people's ears (seemingly at random) purely for the "beauty" of it. Whatever left behind the bones that became The Ribs in Bonetown is more or less outright stated to be this- [[spoiler:even the]] [[spoiler:''slake-moths'']] [[spoiler: find being around The Ribs unsettling.]]
** It's at least implied that [[spoiler: there's something even more powerful that ''eats slake-moths'' in their native habitat, that keeps their numbers down]].
* FacelessGoons: The Militia, who vaciliate between [[EliteMooks Elite]] and Regular {{Mooks}}, depending on the needs of the scene.
* FantasticRacism
* FantasyCounterpartCulture (New Crobuzon is basically London, although the author has stated that other cities were also influences, notably Cairo)
* FateWorseThanDeath (Pretty much everybody who doesn't die)
* ForScience: A big part of why Isaac wants to help Yagharek.
* FreakinessShame: Grimnebulin is totally hot for his girlfriend, who has a scarab for a head. He reflects at length about how his revulsion turns him on. There are also bordellos that cater to people who want to have sex with Remades, who have had BodyHorror alterations done to them.
* GiantSpider: The Weaver.
* HandicappedBadass: Jack Half-a-Prayer, the one-man LaResistance who has been Remade with a giant Praying Mantis arm.
* HelpingHands: The Handlingers.
* HumanResources: The avatar of [[spoiler: the Construct Council]].
* HumongousMecha: [[spoiler: the Construct Council.]]
* IconOfRebellion: Jack-half-a-prayer.
* InterspeciesRomance (Isaac and Lin)
* LaResistance (Runagate Rampant)
* LaserGuidedKarma: Happens, in a small way, to Mr. Motley [[spoiler: One of the slake moths he purchased from the government lobotomised Lin and facilitated her escape. Even if he found her again, his statue can never be finished. The epilogue describes him ranting at the incomplete statue.]]
* LateToThePunchline: Finding out what "Prayer" in Jack Half-a-Prayer really means. [[spoiler:One of his arms has been replaced with the claw of a giant PRAYING mantis.]]
* LogicBomb: Isaac uses one of these as a ''power source'' for his moth-baiting crisis engine.
* MacabreMothMotif: Slake moths.
* MachineWorship: The Godmech cogs. The trope is played for comedy at first when [[ScaryBlackMan Isaac]] frightens off a Godmech Cog, and played straight [[spoiler: when the [[HumongousMecha Construct Council]] shows up.]]
* MalignantPlotTumor - The [[spoiler:slake-moths]].
* MermaidProblem: Neatly tied up when it comes to the Khepri. Weird bug head, sexy lady body. [[FetishFuel For some reason]].
* MushroomSamba: Lucky Gazid hides some dreamshit in Isaac's sandwich. Isaac doesn't realise until things start going weird. (Note that to the reader, Isaac's world is pretty darned weird to begin with ... but to ''him'' it makes sense.)
* NightmareFetishist: How else to describe Isaac Grimnebulin? He's in love with a woman whose head is a giant beetle, a bird-person turning up on his doorstep asking for a new set of wings all but causes him to squee, and he is cheerfully enchanted with one particularly weird grub netted by his black-market attempts to find flight specimens. [[spoiler: Until that grub grows up.]] You know when Isaac is freaked out, shit got real. [[spoiler: He can hold a conversation, an intelligible and productive conversation, with ''The Weaver''.]]
* NobleSavage (Yagharek [[spoiler: Subverted by the end of PerdidoStreetStation. Played straight with the rest of his race though.]])
* NoMouth: Joshua, a minor Remade character, had his mouth sealed for refusing to name his burglary accomplices. [[SubvertedTrope He cut himself a new one,]] [[BodyHorror but didn't do a good job]].
* NonMammalMammaries: A female garuda is specifically stated to have "ornamental" breasts incapable of lactating. Averted with the vodyanoi, whose gender can be fully concealed with a loincloth.
* OhCrap (The city rulers in Perdido Street Station, on realising that the devils are scared of their problem.)
* OneGenderRace (The Khepri, effectively - who subvert the standard female-only race rules by being BeePeople (well, beetle people) and not at all pretty)
** They do have two different genders, but show extreme sexual dimorphism: the males are mindless beetles, whereas the females are sentient and are largely humanoid.
* OrificeInvasion: The slake-moths.
* PostModernMagik - too many examples to list.
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy - Yagharek, though a more articulate and melancholy version of the trope.
* [[spoiler: PuppeteerParasite]] - The handlingers.
* PyrrhicVictory: [[spoiler: Isaac has saved New Crobuzon, defeated the [[MacabreMothMotif Slake Moths]], proved his crisis engine will work (and more importantly, kept it out of the hands of the CorruptGovernment & the MechaMooks), and hardest of all, ''survived''. On the other hand, Lin is lobotomized, Yagharek is revealed as a rapist, Isaac refuses to help Yagharek, and the Constructs are headed for destruction. Not to mention Isaac and Derkhan have to flee New Crobuzon with the lobotomized Lin in tow, as the government is understandably not interested in giving them credit for having saved the city and has left them at the top of the Most Wanted list.]]
* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil
** [[spoiler: Averted in that the "victim" explicitly doesn't accept that label or consider herself damaged. Played straight (or doubly averted) by how the protagonist reacts- WordOfGod states he was literally incapable of understanding her point of view.]]
*** [[spoiler: The circumstances are rather special here: according to the garuda's BlueAndOrangeMorality, it was less the rape than Yagharek's removal of his victim's ''choice'' not to have sex with him that the garuda find unacceptable. They literally refer to it as choice-theft in the second degree. The first degree being murder.]]
** When Derkhan is searching for [[spoiler: human moth-bait in the hospital's terminal ward]], her musings about who might be evil enough to be selected list "rapist" second, after "militia informer" (her personal nemeses) and ''before'' "child-killer" or "torturer".
* RobotBuddy (David & Lublumai's cleaning construct)
* ScaryBlackMan: Isaac is described as having skin the color of smouldering wood, he's very fat (meaning he possesses StoutStrength, which is described below) and knows how to use his not inconsiderable bulk to intimidate (see an amusing scene where he drives off a [[MachineWorship Godmech Cog]] and uses his bulk for this purpose.) and has [[NightmareFetishist a couple disturbing interests]].
* SchmuckBait: The Torque, at least to scientist-dabblers. Isaac spends some time explaining, with graphic illustrations (mostly left to the reader's imagination), exactly why messing with it is a really bad idea.
* SecretPolice
* ShoutOut (The rampage of the five Rorschach-winged dream-eaters is referred to variously as the Dream Curse, the Midsummer Nightmare, and Nocturne Syndrome, all references to ComicBook/TheSandman)
** The professional adventurers are described as "grave-robbers" and only in it for "[[DungeonsAndDragons gold and experience]]."
* StaticStunGun: Stingboxes
* StoutStrength: Isaac vomits after [[LeParkour enough rooftop-hopping]] and gets winded after climbing up a flight of stairs, but he is very capable of punching Lucky Gazid across a room.
* StraightGay: To a certain extant Derkhan, although it may be a case of HideYourLesbians. She has a 'good' reason: New Crobuzon is not, to put it mildly, rainbow-friendly.
* TakeThat (The book includes a good-natured jab at the typical role-playing-game adventuring party, who are looked upon by the thoroughly urban protagonists as a bunch of psychotic tomb-robbers)
---> Derkham: "Anything for gold and experience."
* VoiceOfTheResistance: Runagate Rampant
* WhipItGood: Yagharek's weapon of choice, with which he saves [[spoiler: part of]] Lin.
* WildCard: The Weaver (and how.)
* [[spoiler:WomenInRefrigerators]]
** It's [[KillEmAll China Miéville.]] [[AnyoneCanDie Refrigerators for everybody!]] [[KarmaHoudini Except the total bastards.]]
* WordSalad: The Weaver. Also, [[spoiler: Isaac's]] experience while under the influence of dreamshit.
* TheWorfEffect: Lemuel's bodyguard, Mr. X, is presented as an intimidating {{Badass}} through and through. Not only does a slake-moth kill him virtually instantly, but it does so simply to ''have something to throw'' at its intended target.
* XanatosSpeedChess: [[spoiler: Isaac, by the end of the book.]]

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