Japanese Devil Fish Girl Books in Order

This sequence, beginning with The Japanese Devil Fish Girland Other Unnatural Attractions, shifts Rankin’s chaos into a full‑blown steampunk universe. It’s the 1890s, nearly a decade after the Martian invasion made famous by H. G. Wells, and the British Empire now stretches to Mars thanks to reverse‑engineered alien technology and the tinkering of Charles Babbage and Nikola Tesla.

Professor Coffin runs a travelling sideshow whose star exhibit is a pickled Martian from the original invasion. When crowds start to thin and the specimen quite literally comes apart, he goes looking for a new attraction: the rumoured Japanese Devil Fish Girl. His quest across a colonised solar system soon entangles him with rival powers, off‑world natives and rumours of a second, even nastier war between the planets.

The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age moves the focus back to London, where devout showman Colonel Katterfelto has brought his Clockwork Minstrels and a half‑built mechanical saviour to the Electric Alhambra music hall. As a new Ripper‑style killer stalks Whitechapel, consulting detective Cameron Bell and Darwin, Katterfelto’s unnervingly clever monkey butler, investigate whether the promised 'Messiah' is more beast than blessing.

In The Educated Ape and Other Wonders of the World, Darwin steps fully into the spotlight. An articulate, sharply dressed ape who’d quite like humans to behave better, he joins Bell and an assortment of scientists, villains and suffragettes as London prepares a Grand Exposition of wonders from Earth, Venus and Jupiter. Time machines, antimatter plots and the possible arrival of the Antichrist all jostle for space.

The run concludes with The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends, told in Darwin’s own voice. His memoir hops through time and space, taking in Martian battlefields, doodlebug raids, encounters with Sherlock Holmes and Winston Churchill, and more weaponised poultry than seems entirely safe. Underneath the gags, there’s a surprisingly affectionate portrait of an ape trying to keep his dignity while history collapses around him.

Together, the four books mix Victorian adventure, planetary romance and sheer silliness into a sprawling alternate history that still plugs neatly into Rankin’s wider universe.