My son recommended this book to me, and since I have read and enjoyed several books by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I bought it and gave it a go. It’s set in a future where humans have pretty much destroyed the planet through both climate change and war and have sent out ark ships of sleeping people into deep space. Ahead of these ships were sent terraforming ships to find suitable planets and kick start life there, including incorporating a nano virus which would speed up the evolution of intelligence in primates, so that there would at least be the survival of human like beings even if the actual remnants of humanity didn’t make it.
For some reason, it wasn’t primates but arachnids that became infected with the nano virus, so the planet where the last living (or possibly the last living) humans eventually arrived was run by a civilisation of giant intelligent spiders.
There were lots of misunderstandings and miscommunications and fighting ensued. It turns out to be the first in a trilogy/series, and I’m not sure I liked it enough to be bothered continuing with it. I think I’m just not enough of a fan of this type of world building hard sci-fi with fighting and politics etc. I thought it was intelligently written though, and I did like the way spider civilizations differed from our idea of how things should be.
Sarah Wray Writer 