New Crobuzon is a vast, decaying city-state where humans share streets with Cactacae, Khepri, Vodyanoi, and dozens of other sentient species, all subjugated under a corrupt Parliament enforced by brutal militias. 'Remaking' — the grotesque surgical fusion of human flesh with animal and machine parts — serves as both punishment and enhancement. When rogue scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin agrees to help a wingless Garuda fly again, his research inadvertently releases a family of psychic predators called Slake Moths that feed on consciousness itself, plunging the city into existential terror.

Bas-Lag gives readers a rotating cast of unlikely protagonists — a fat, unconventional scientist; a Khepri artist; a revolutionary wanderer. None are heroes in the traditional sense, and Miéville is interested in the costs of heroism as much as its glory. The vagabond Yagharek and the revolutionary Judah Low stand out as characters of profound, melancholy depth.

The three Bas-Lag novels are each set in the same world but follow different casts and scales of conflict: from the city-level horror of Perdido Street Station, to the maritime strange-ness of The Scar, to the political-revolutionary sweep of Iron Council, which depicts decades of resistance and the mythic power of movements that dare to defy an empire. Together they form a portrait of a world that is simultaneously beautiful, grotesque, politically charged, and deeply humane.