Perdido Street Station

Mieville's world building is simply intense! At the heart of the novel is New Crobuzon, a seedy overcrowded steampunk kingdom of a city, teeming with life of all sorts, creatures from various species; bird people, insect people, people recrafted into ‘remades', beings from this plane and those from beyond; criminals, artists, scientists, rebels, politicians.

It's hard at first to dig your way through the onslaught of details about this weird-fantasy victorian horror London, full of vivid, dark and grotesque elaborations, alchemy and madness. But then a villain emerges and a rag-tag-crew sets off to fight it and suddenly the plot just catapults and pulls you along.