Bas-Lag Series Reading Order
by China Mieville, China Miéville
Looking for the complete Bas-Lag reading order? This guide lists all 5 China Mieville books in Bas-Lag in order — with covers, ratings, and page counts for every entry. The full series spans approximately 3,527 pages.
Perdido Street Station: A Bas-Lag Novel 1
Bas-Lag #1
"Compulsively readable." The Washington Post Book World "A work of exhaustive inventiveness ... superlative fantasy" Tim… "Compulsively readable." The Washington Post Book World "A work of exhaustive inventiveness ... superlative fantasy" Time Out The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the centre of its own bewildering world. Humans and mutants and arcane races throng the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the rivers are sluggish with unnatural effluent, and factories and foundries pound into the night. For more than a thousand years, the parliament and its brutal militia have ruled over a vast array of workers and artists, spies, magicians, junkies and whores. Now a stranger has come, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand, and inadvertently something unthinkable is released. Soon the city is gripped by an alien terror - and the fate of millions depends on a clutch of outcasts on the run from lawmakers and crime-lords alike. The urban nightscape becomes a hunting ground as battles rage in the shadows of bizarre buildings. And a reckoning is due at the city's heart, in the vast edifice of Perdido Street Station. It is too late to escape. PRAISE FOR CHINA MIEVILLE "[Mieville s] wit dazzles, his humour is lively, and the pure vitality of his imagination is astonishing." Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian (on Three Moments of an Explosion) "Dark and thought-provoking." The San Diego Union-Tribune (on The City & The City) "Richly conceived." The New York Times Book Review (on Embassytown) "Mieville more than delivers." San Francisco Chronicle (on Kraken)
Perdido Street Station
Bas-Lag #1
In the sprawling, grimy metropolis of New Crobuzon, disgraced scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin takes on a desperate c… In the sprawling, grimy metropolis of New Crobuzon, disgraced scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin takes on a desperate commission: to restore the flight of an exiled, wingless garuda. His dangerous, transgressive research, however, inadvertently unleashes a terrifying plague of slake-moths upon the city. These nightmare creatures feed on consciousness itself, leaving their victims empty shells and threatening to engulf New Crobuzon in a wave of mental desolation. Now, Isaac and an unlikely alliance of khepri artists, ruthless crime lords, and desperate revolutionaries must race against time to halt the slake-moths before the entire city is consumed.
The Scar: A Bas-Lag Novel 2
Bas-Lag #2
A human cargo bound for servitude in exile... A pirate city hauled across the oceans... A hidden miracle about be reveal… A human cargo bound for servitude in exile... A pirate city hauled across the oceans... A hidden miracle about be revealed... These are the ingredients of an astonishing story. It is the story of a prisoner's journey. Of the search for the island of a forgotten people, for the most astonishing beast in the seas, and ultimately for a fabled place - a massive wound in reality, a source of unthinkable power and danger. PRAISE FOR CHINA MIEVILLE "[Mieville's] wit dazzles, his humour is lively, and the pure vitality of his imagination is astonishing." Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian (on Three Moments of an Explosion) "Dark and thought-provoking." The San Diego Union-Tribune (on The City & The City) "Richly conceived." The New York Times Book Review (on Embassytown) "Mieville more than delivers." San Francisco Chronicle (on Kraken) "Compulsively readable." The Washington Post Book World (on Perdido Street Station)
The Scar
Bas-Lag #2
Winner of the British Fantasy Award, The Scar by China Miéville is a colossal fantasy of incredible diversity and spellb… Winner of the British Fantasy Award, The Scar by China Miéville is a colossal fantasy of incredible diversity and spellbinding imagination, set in the richly visualized world of Bas-Lag. A human cargo bound for servitude in exile . . . A pirate city hauled across the oceans . . . A hidden miracle about be revealed . . . These are the ingredients of an astonishing story. It is the story of a prisoner's journey. Of the search for the island of a forgotten people, for the most astonishing beast in the seas, and ultimately for a fabled place - a massive wound in reality, a source of unthinkable power and danger.
Iron Council: A Bas-Lag Novel 3
Bas-Lag #3
WINNER OF THE 2005 ARTHUR C CLARKE AWARD "Mieville moves effortlessly into the first division of those who use the tools… WINNER OF THE 2005 ARTHUR C CLARKE AWARD "Mieville moves effortlessly into the first division of those who use the tools and weapons of the fantastic to define and create the fiction of the coming century." Neil Gaiman The third novel in China Mieville's amazing imaginative sequence focused on the fabulous city of New Crobuzon. With economic slump and growing social unrest, New Crobuzon has become a fraught and dangerous place. The militia patrol in uniform, there is tension between its myriad races, there are even rumours of war. In an attempt to spur trade, a major company is building a railway across the continent, but the project involves brutal suppression of both the workers and the native inhabitants they pass. As mutiny grows among the slave labourers, one train is hijacked on the half-finished line. They tear up the track for a few miles behind them, then begin to rebuild it in front of the train -- diverging from the original route and disappearing into the desert. This renegade train, 'The Iron Council', soon becomes an icon of freedom to the repressed urban population, till the city government has no choice but to hunt it down and destroy it. Whatever happens, they cannot allow it to escape-and so begins a desperate pursuit across alien wild lands filled with bizarre populations, monsters and hazards. PRAISE FOR CHINA MIEVILLE "[Mieville's] wit dazzles, his humour is lively, and the pure vitality of his imagination is astonishing." Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian (on Three Moments of an Explosion) "Dark and thought-provoking." The San Diego Union-Tribune (on The City & The City) "Richly conceived." The New York Times Book Review (on Embassytown) "Mieville more than delivers." San Francisco Chronicle (on Kraken) "Compulsively readable." The Washington Post Book World (on Perdido Street Station)
