when he was captured by Armada. Bellis and Silas find physical release in each other, and commiserate that they are powerless to save their home city. Shekel, who is learning to read with Bellis's help, finds a strange book in the Armada's library. He brings it to Bellis, and she realizes that it is the book the Lovers need to raise the avanc. Knowing that she must get a message home, Bellis destroys a large part of the Appendix which shows the equations and methods to raise the avanc. With the book destroyed, the Lovers seek the book's writer, Krüach Aum, the only person who knows how to summon the mythical creature. Armada mounts an expedition to his unnamed island home, which is the island of the dreaded Anophelii (a horrific and deadly race of mosquito-people). The Lovers find Aum and the information they need, while Bellis uses their time on the island, away from Armada, to get a message home warning of the impending grindylow invasion. Armada then successfully raises the avanc and captures it – no mean feat, as the avanc is an immense creature, several miles long. The Lovers' true plan is finally revealed: to use the great speed and pulling power of the avanc to find the fabled Scar, a place in the world where reality breaks down and anything is possible. The Lovers see this as a source of ultimate power. On the journey far into unmapped waters, numerous matters threaten the city. Silas Fennec's actions, which have been far from honest, single-handedly bring down the fury of the New Crobuzon navy and the inhuman wrath of the grindylows. Following this, a civil war breaks out within the city. Terribly damaged, Armada finally nears the Scar, and faces the unsettling horrors that accompany the breakdown of possibility. They pick up a shipwrecked friend from a different train of possibilities, chances and choices, who warns them of The Scar and that he saw the city fall into the wound of the world and everybody was killed. Mutiny follows and the people of Armada finally force the city to turn around and head back to the Swollen Ocean, the life of quiet and piracy, that they all want. The last chapter of the book is another excerpt of Bellis's letter home, in which she realizes how much she was being used by Doul. The reader is left