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I nominate Cina Miéville's Perdido Street Station.
It's a bit on the border between SF and Fantasy (is there a border line, somewhere?), but I think it's a good read:
"Perdido Street Station takes place in New Crobuzon, a large metropolis, teeming with life (and death), in an alternate world Mieville has conceived. Technologically it's not entirely as advanced (in most respects) as our own. It's also not the most pleasant of places:
New Crobuzon was a huge plague pit, a morbific city. Parasites, infection and rumour were uncontainable.
A variety of sentient species populate the city, including humans, khepri and cactacae (more insect- and cactus-like, respectively), and a spider-like being known as the Weaver. Not satisfied with what nature allows there is also a great deal of experimentation with so-called Remade, beings punished by being organically or mechanically pieced together, or remade in some way to serve particular needs.
The central figure is the human Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, nominally still affiliated with the university but in fact working, not too successfully, on his own as a scientific dabbler. He is having an inter-species relationship with Lin, a khepri (with "their women's bodies, their insectile heads"), but it's when another creature comes with a commission for him that his life really changes. Yagharek, a garuda whose wings have been removed (for some terrible crime he committed among his own), approaches Isaac with the hope that the scientist can get him airborne again. It's exactly the sort of job the scientist can't resist. [....]"
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