I know, I may be the last person in fandom to read this book, and after winning the Arthur C. Clarke award, garnering rave reviews, and essentially founding the steampunk genre, it doesn’t need any help from me.

But I’m not here to talk about the characters, most of whom are just as honorable and twisted as real-life people, nor about the language, which is gorgeous and depraved, though my editor brain, honed from obsessive rereads of Three Parts Dead over the last few months, occasionally catches Mieville reusing words he really should not reuse (febrile, putrefying). I’m here to tell a story:

Yesterday as I walked to work I read a section of the book that features a horrible insect monster. This is not a spoiler, as within the first five or six pages it becomes clear that horrible monsters of some sort, probably insectile, are an inevitable consequence of Mieville’s world.

As I read, I think to myself: “You know, this would be really scary if I were reading it at night; as it is, it’s great, honest fun and not particularly scary at all.”

At that moment, the wind decided to blow a plastic candy wrapper over the pebbly sidewalk at my feet, producing a sound not unlike giant insect legs tickling over a wooden floor. I first saw the wrapper in question from an unusual vantage point, because upon hearing the strange sound I had jumped about a foot and a half straight up in the air out of abject monkey-brain terror.

So much for broad daylight, I suppose.