So, I’m reading Mieville’s latest, a children’s book about two teenage girls who slip into a mirror world occupied by all the lost and broken things of London. So far, it’s excellent. But I just had to share a couple of lines from early in the novel, that made me smile with recognition, the sort of shared opinion that endears me to the work.

“There’s a lot of animals very good at that sort of disinformation. There are no cats in UnLondon, for example, because they’re not magic and mysterious at all, they’re idiots.”