I'm currently in the middle of this book and it is hard to put down. Set in an city that might as well be a world you are exposed to strange races and even stranger personalities. But it is written in such a way that part way through the book you find nothing strange about women with insectal heads or men with wings. Apparently one of the main character's (Isaac, the rogue scientist) experiments escapes his lab and puts the entire city in peril, or so my fiance tells me.