Vurt tells the story of Scribble and his "gang", the Stash Riders, as they search for his missing sister/lover Desdemona. The novel is set in an alternate version of Manchester, England, in which society has been shaped by Vurt, a hallucinogenic drug/shared alternate reality, which one accesses by sucking on colour-coded feathers.

Sometimes it feels that the whole world is smeared with Vaz.

Tropes used in Vurt include:
  • Bittersweet Ending: Scribble brings Desdemona back into the real world, but must stay with Game Cat and become his apprentice and (as is hinted) his successor.]]
  • Brother-Sister Incest: Scribble and Desdemona
  • Deal with the Devil
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Thing. Complete with unintelligible speech.
  • Equivalent Exchange: When anything is taken from the Vurt, something of equal worth must be left behind. It's not entirely clear how this worth is determined, but sentimental value does count.
  • Five Races: Along with five possible two-way hybrids, five three-way mixes, five four-way combinations, and one theoretical combination of all five races. This is genetically implausible, but so is the fact that human/dog is a viable pairing--just go with it.
  • Great Big Book of Everything: The Game Cat
  • Magical Land: Where Vurt takes you
  • Meaningful Name: Scribble lives up to his name as he is the story teller.
  • Mental Fusion: One time, Scribble can feel Suze inside his body, touching all his body parts.
  • New Weird
  • Shout-Out: Octave Mirbeau's The Torture Garden
    • Also, the name Curious Yellow is a reference to the film I Am Curious (Yellow), a foreign and soft erotic film.
  • Telepathy: Bridget and other shadowgirls are capable of mind reading and writing.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: Yellow feathers.