Perdido Street Station

Let's put aside a few things when considering China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. We won't worry about all the awards he's won for the book, or the fact that the book is coherently built and densely plotted enough that this could have been an entire trilogy, but he weaves it all together into one narrative. Let's even put aside the fact that “extradimensional moth that eats consciousness and shits nightmares” may be one of the most terrifying concepts I've ever encountered in a novel.

This is a man who knows how to WRITE. Even if we, as I said, put aside everything else about this book, it's worth reading just to watch Mieville stringing words together so that they flow like honey, but without feeling overly sweet. He's similar, in that regard, to someone like Anthony Burgess or Chuck Palahnuik - the message is almost secondary to how artistically they're expressing it.