Wow. After having been recommended to me twice in one day, I did something I rarely do and bought a copy of this book. And what an imagination! Mieville creates a dark, organic, rotting, pulsing, gem of a world, the kind of place you can really imagine ever sees daylight, and inhabits it with characters and beasts you will not soon forget. I was deeply impressed by his creation—finally a deep and complete-feeling fantasy world with na'er a gnome, dwarf, or wizard in sight. And damn the man has a large vocabulary. I haven't had to look up so many words while reading since I attempted, and failed, at reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy in the tenth grade.