• Genre:  Sci Fi
• Age group: Adult
• Pub. date: June 4th 2015
• Format:  Audiobook
• Pages: 600
• Goodreads link

A race for survival among the stars… Humanity’s last survivors escaped earth’s ruins to find a new home. But when they find it, can their desperation overcome its dangers?

WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

If someone had told me I would love and root for spiders in a book, I never would’ve believed them. But here were are. The spiders are my precious babies, I love them and will protect them. When I read this, all I knew going in was “space spiders” and I was so hyped to meet them.  And then the more we learned about how they came to be the more hyped I got. It was truly and strongly love at first sight with me and this book, every time a new chapter started was all – fuck yeah that’s great!

The story’s told through three points of view, two human individuals and the third PoV is spider society as it evolves. Their lifespan is much shorter, so we get to see many of their generations, their challenges, how they adapt, social change, religious change, scientific progress. It’s fascinating. The spiders we meet each time are given the same names, so we always know Portia’s more the action kinda and Bianca’s more the scientist kind, it’s easy to keep track of things. I loved how elements of their biology affected their society and technology, and how it says things about humans by contrast with the spiders. Their technology, in particular, is so creative and something I never would’ve thought of.

The humans are fine, but they don’t compare to the spiders. If this book had been 100% spiders I would’ve been ok with that. The humans grew on me more in the second half, where time took its toll on them too and things started to get more engaging. Most of all they’re aggravatingly human, thousand of years in the future, making he same mistakes.

Time is very interesting in this book because for the human PoVs we’re told the story through one lifetime. But because they keep going to cryo-hybernation-sleep-thing and waking up long periods of time later everyone’s out of sync with everyone else. At one point a character thinks about how hundreds of years passed in weeks and it gets tough for him to process that.

So yeah, in a nutshell, loved it, spiders are the best people ever and great ideas on time, technology, and societies growing.

Recommended for: fans and future fans of spiders, though looking for innovative sci-fi that’s fun to read

r/fantasy Bingo squares: Book-club, Featuring Exploration, Optimistic SFF

For more sci-fi recs check out this list I made for SciFi Month