The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked everything around them.

Ah. So he's forgotten the most important rule of warfare. Which is... That nothing ever goes to plan.

Maybe they didn't want you to realize that every civilization has its weakness. There's always one thing we depend on. And if someone takes it away all that's left is some story in a history class.

Oh, this beast? It's...perspicacious loris. 'Perspicacious' meaning 'wise or canny'." "Get stuffed," Bovril said, then giggled. "And it insults people," Telsa said. "How peculiar.

I can’t imagine anything worse than being required to have fun.

Around the outskirts of the city, cut off from town by the black oval of the river, everything was in darkness. Everyone ugly was in bed by now.

Sometimes it felt like her life was a series of falls from ever-greater heights.