SPIDERS. and I do not even like spiders

I put off reading this for two years because of the spiders and I want everyone who is also putting it off because of the spiders to know that you are being an idiot, as I was.

the structure is the thing. you get two timelines, one on a generation ship where the humans are having a slow miserable time in and out of cryo, and one on a planet where a species of spider gets uplifted by accident and then you watch them build a civilisation over thousands of years. and because the spiders live short lives and the humans keep freezing themselves, the two threads run at completely different speeds and meet where they need to. that is such a clean idea and I have not seen anyone else do it that well.

the spider chapters are better than the human chapters and it is not close. watching them invent maths, then chemistry, then a communication protocol, then have an actual religious schism about it, was genuinely one of the best reading experiences I had that year. Portia. I cared about a spider called Portia.

the human side sags. Holsten is a bit of a wet character to hang half a book on, and there are stretches where it is people arguing in a corridor about who is in charge, which is the least interesting thing available on a spaceship.

but the ending. the ending does something I did not think it was going to do and it is a much kinder book than it had been pretending to be for four hundred pages. I was grinning at a wall.

nine. read it with the spiders. it is fine. mostly fine.