Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award by the age of 30, China Miéville has also been a World Fantasy Award and Bram Stoker finalist. The Scar, arguably his most ambitious novel yet, takes us on a bizarre voyage on a vast ship teeming with grotesquely re-engineered prisoners. Among them, biding her time for a peaceful landing, is the brilliant Bellis Coldwine, a linguist whose access to secrets protects her. But on the Swollen Oceans, pirates overrun this vessel of mutants, and Bellis, now doubly captive, confronts a death sentence that others call life...