It has the best evolutionary world building of an "alien" civilization i've seen out of any other media imo. The chapters with the humans were boring as fuck tho. Prose is decent enough, which is high praise for the sci-fi genre. Like most sci-fi it also carries itself more by the mind-blowing concepts than deep characterization, but that's somewhat understandable in this case since it would be quite literally impossible to make spider feelings relatable when it's trying to be as accurate to their biology as possible
I really did not think it was that good, and I was tired as shit of it real fast and couldn't wait to finish it. And I say this a total sci-fi slut who will gobble up most sci-fi without much afterthought.The whole book just magnifies all the shitty human qualities and focuses on the worst human traits throughout. Complete pessimism sci-fi. "Le humans are bad and le evil and corrupt". Add to it that there wasn't a single character who was actually interesting, all of them are bland, unmemorable and one-dimensional, even their names are basic as fuck. I literally read it a month ago and I couldn't tell you a single character's name or what made them stand out.The spider stuff was alright, but I did not think it was that incredible. Also>the virus was originally intended to modify monkey (mammal) DNA>the monkeys did not make it, but we have spiders and other species that the virus is interacting with successfullyand then halfway through the book we find out that spiders compared human anatomy to mice anatomy, meaning that mice (MAMMALS) lived on the planet, but uhmmm, the virus did not affect them much. This is where I was done with this book. Fucking retarded writing, it would have made most sense that we see chad-mice before the spiders take over. Honestly even remembering all this just makes me angry, sorry to shit on your parade OP but I just thought it's total garbage and unbelievably overrated. I do not recommend this book at all and don't care for the sequels or any other books this guy wrote.
>>25306755>and then halfway through the book we find out that spiders compared human anatomy to mice anatomy, meaning that mice (MAMMALS) lived on the planet, but uhmmm, the virus did not affect them muchActually, the book states that the virus was modified to not affect mammals other than the monkeys, because Kern didn't want them to compete with other mammals. The reason why it can affect invertebrates is because they weren't taken into consideration as possible candidates for intelligent growth, which is... Insane if you know anything about arthropods. This is a massive flaw, i agreeStill think it's pretty dope for the spiders alone. I don't think there is any other media that takes the biology of an alien species into consideration for how their societal norms are shaped as well as this book
>>2530665910/10 , my favourite sf book.
>>25306659It was trash. Plain and shrimple. The type of book you regret having wasted your time on, even if it was by just listening to it on audiobook.
