It's a testament, really, to how good Miéville is

That's he's able to convey the design of a creature, obliquely, and in pieces over the course of a four-hundred page novel and have two people imagine precisely the same things, as here, with myself and this artist.

Embassytown is a better novel of its kind than most and a great deal more sly and cruel towards your politics than any. The climax of the novel has you emotionally gratified in your own hypocrisy and narrow, colonialist horizons.