Perdido Street Station is the second novel written by China Miéville, and the first set in New Crobuzon. It was nominated for the 2002 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

Synopsis

Perdido Street Station opens with the arrival of Too Too Abstract Individual Yagharek Not To Be Respected to New Crobuzon.

Commissions

We then meet Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, an independent scientist, and his khepri girlfriend Lin, a spit-artist. Lin is commissioned to make a statue of the crime boss Motley, who is a hideously remade being. Meanwhile, Yagharek (a garuda) commissions Isaac to restore his wings, which were removed for the crime of choice-theft in the second degree.

Physiognomies of flight

Isaac starts his inquiries by trying to find out about the garuda, including going to a freak show with Derkhan Blueday, a member of the Salacus Fields set that Lin hangs around with. He then obtains a large number of flying animals, including a multicoloured larvae intended for a secret and dangerous R&D program. Derkhan is a seditionist, a writer for the illegal magazine Runagate Rampant based in a Dog Fenn slaughterhouse and run by Benjamin Flex. Isaac has a failed visit to the garuda in Spatters, which prompts him to free all his animals (bar the larva) and focus on crisis energy, the core subject of his career. He discovers by accident that the larva likes dreamshit, a new drug on the market, and feeds it (as well as experiencing the drug by accident).

Metamorphoses

A Plague of Nightmares

A particularly intresting addtion to the book, the way the author ties in natural relationships between consumer and producer into these extremly unatural creatures. Just as a buffalo grazing on a plain leaves fertilizer behind to feed a new generation of grass which will feed the buffalo again latter, the slake moths "fertlize" their human crop with a plauge of nightmares that renders the population of New Crobuzon easy prey.

Councils

The Glasshouse

Crisis

Judgement

Related Books

• The Gormenghast novels, by Mervyn Peake
• The Viriconium cycle, by M. John Harrison