[troutman]

Perdido Street Station
China Miéville
http://www.sfsite.com/07b/ps108.htm

If you're one of those people who avoid the Fantasy genre from fear of even the slightest whiff of wizards or elves, here's a well worthy quest: make haste to where your bookstore stuffs the countless Tolkien spawn and rescue a copy of Perdido Street Station from the mediocre horde. This is a novel that has more in common with the work of that similarly named fellow, Melville, than any mere commercial conjuring of fairyland.