Dream with Our Eyes Open

I promised myself that this time, I would go through Rats and Gargoyles at a leisurely pace and figure out exactly what happened. I failed once again: the book is too giddily chockful of enjoyable little vignettes and nuggets of description for me to take at a walk.

A world somewhat like our own is ruled over by living, corporeal, capricious gods, known as the Decans, who are served by ferocious winged demons known as Acolytes. Below them in the hierarchy, but above the humans (and humanoids - at least one other race is mentioned), are human-sized intelligent Rats. There are impressive magical powers based on Masonic principles, a University of Crime, an Invisible College, Human revolutionaries, Rat clerics, builders' apprentices in silk coveralls, ancient snake gods deep underground, tarot cards, five cardinal directions instead of four, a death cycle (like a life cycle, only the other way around), and more politics than you can shake a stick at - and somewhere in there, I think there may actually be a plot.

(Only your friends steal your books. This one was missing from our collection for almost a decade, so I finally broke down and bought another copy.)