I came after this for the spiders. I love jumping spiders. I own a jumping spider. I was happy enough to read along soley to read about them. If you're thinking of reading this for the same reason, you should know the spider chapters are absolutely delightful to read. The characterisation is just too perfect and you'll love it.

Luckily for me, it turns out the rest of the book is also amazing.

I would love to pinpoint what exactly was so good but I think it was just... everything? A must read if you're in the mood for some sci-fi. If it's not on your tbr, put it on there. If it's not at the top of your tbr, move it up. Glad I got the next book bought and ready to read already. ( )

Okay: everyone who told me this was a great book even if you have a Thing about spiders - I'm happy for you. For me, this was a harrowing read of twitching discomfort and seeing things move out the corner of my eye. My imagination doesn't need this sort of nightmare fodder. However, if you DON'T have a Thing about spiders - this is epic science fiction, tracking the final days of humanity falling apart on a generation ship and the evolution of a new (spidery) intelligence on a terraformed planet.

The consideration given to world-building and alt science based on spiders is brilliant (twitch twitch), although I found the spider chapters a bit dry (possibly the bit where I self-narrated in David Attenborough's voice to make them bearable didn't help, as they ended up reading like documentaries; plus I actively didn't want to be imagining too hard, which limited my engagement). It could also be confusing at times: the spider chapters jump through time, but have characters with the same names in every period, which sort of makes sense in context but can make it hard to immediately grasp when a chapter is set.

By contrast, the human chapters (jumping through time thanks to cryogenics) make perfect sense as they have a single POV through line. Unfortunately, the generation ship is peopled by a shipload of at best unsympathetic and at worst unpleasant characters I didn't root for, so my engagement on this side of the equation was equally limited.

Overall, this was a force finish for me as it is a Subjective Chaos nominee - it's a long way outside my comfort zone (spiders), brilliantly imagined - but I'm not sure I'd have loved it even if it hadn't been spiders. Objectively, 4 stars.

Subjectively, ARGH. ( )

Might be the best book I'll read all year 🙃 ( )

Very interesting and unique sci-fi story. Kudos to the Adrian Tchaikovsky for his imagination and research that went into bringing the spider side of the story to "life". Overall it felt like the book was 25% too long and the spider side of the story got so farfetched (I know its science fiction) I lost interest and just wanted to fast forward to the human side chapters. Not currently interested in reading the sequels but perhaps one day I'll revisit the series. 3.5 stars ( )

Lots of big ideas here but I felt that the novel was much too long. Had one beautiful throwaway line in just the right context that made me laugh out loud - "Girls will be girls"... ( )