Last night I sat up reading 'The Scar'. It's by China Mieville, the guy who wrote Perdido Street Station. It's nominally a 'Fantasy Novel'. Both books are set in the same world, one that's at about the same technological level as Georgian England, where magic exists and is treated the same way as science. But you know, Harry Potter and Frodo never go to the toilet. Mieville's characters live. The eat, sleep, shit, piss, fuck in locations that are as much a character as the inhabitants. The first book's city, New Crobuzon, could probably be seen as the main protagonist and everything that goes on is the city protecting itself.
This is done similarly with the city in the Scar, but the book's main character is the ocean. This isn't a new thing to do. It's been done pretty famously many times, and the author knows this. Hell, there's even reference to Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea'.
One of the human characters, a feller named 'Tanner Sack', had what for me has been the best scene so far. Tanner's a criminal, sentenced first to 'Remaking', a process where the punished's body is reshaped with magic in some way to remind them of what they've done. His remaking was to have octopus tentacles grafted onto his chest. He was then sentenced to transportation to the colonies, but events lead him to be a citizen of the floating city of Armada. There, to become more useful and to reshape his life, he paid for himself to be remade again, his body shaped subtly into becoming amphibious.
He works as an engineer, tending to the underside of Armada. As he's learning to adjust to his new body he launches himself out into the water, free from the city, sitting like plankton, miles of dark water beneath him. And he feels small. That fucken hooked me. And I couldn't really tell you why.