"Indeed. Ew, feelings." Skulduggery's own tone is light. "But feeling isn't always emotion. The one I keep imagining is -- it's a dark scene of a boat on the water, with the faintest hint of industrialization on the shoreline. You can't see the buildings, but there are impressions of smoke billowing up from the workhouses; the sky is a muddy sort of black, and the smog is so thick the sun comes out blood red. And when you look at it, you can feel how cold the air must be, of what it might've smelled like."

It's a little odd to be nostalgic about the mid-1800s and the absolute disregard for environmental standards, but here he is.

"The fact that the people are merely shapes on the river, or that you can't differentiate one building from the next, doesn't matter so much as the feeling of cold water and the smell of coal."