A big thank-you to my scientific advisors, including Stewart Hotston, Justina Robson, Michael Czajkowski, Max Barclay and the Entomology department of the Natural History Museum.
Also the usual thanks to my wife, Annie, my agent, Simon Kavanagh, to Peter Lavery, and to Bella Pagan and everyone else at Tor. I’m very glad of all the support for what has been a deeply, weirdly personal project.