Allies will become enemies.
Enemies will become allies.
And the Dark Lord is waiting.
Although Adrian has been writing for decades, it may perhaps be true that his most famous work to date has been the Arthur C Clarke Award-winning novel Children of Time, a science-fiction novel in a future where alien spiders are nicer than humans.
Spiderlight continues this interest in non-human species by having one of its main characters being – guess what? An intelligent spider!
At the beginning, Spiderlight reads as if it is straight out of the Dungeons & Dragons rulebook. There’s a troop of characters – Dion, a priestess of Armes of the Light, Penthos, a bad-tempered mage looking for people to value his efforts, Harathes, a gruff shieldsman and warrior who has the hots for Cyrene, a vicious ranger with skills in archery. Lastly, there’s Lief, a rogue and thief.
It perhaps goes without saying that this band of oddities are all determined to fulfil a prophesy; to use the power of Armes of the Light to destroy Darkness – namely the Dark Lord Darvezian, the latest man-god slaughtering in his name and bringing evil to the world. (What else would a Dark Lord do?)
The first part of the prophesy involves collecting a spider’s fang. When doing this, they find that they have to enlist the help of a giant spider, named Nth (or Enth) who is given the knowledge of ‘the spider’s path’ to get to Darvezian’s fortress quickly and then kill the Dark Lord. Even with this help, the journey would not be easy, especially with one of the Creatures of Darkness (Nth) in tow. So, as a result Penthos uses magic to transform Nth into human form, although he is still rather grotesque – lots of eyes, for one thing. The group then set off on their quest to dispatch Darvezian.
The complication to this is that although the group all have the same goal, they are very different personalities. This means that the assemblage is a massed rabble of ill-mannered, grumpy misfits, barely kept in control by Dion. Much of their journey is characterised by them bickering amongst themselves at times and then barely speaking to each other at others.
As you might expect in a Tchaikovsky novel, Nth is the most likeable character of the lot, despite his odd appearance. Some of the group see Nth as a monster, others as a tool to get the job done, and some by the end as a friend.
The ending is typical Tchaikovsky in that it is perhaps not what you expect. To say more would be a major spoiler, but suffice it to say that it is sensible and logical, bearing in mind what has happened up to that point.
There were some nice surprises with this book. Firstly, it is one of Adrian’s shorter novels, although not lacking thought and depth, which makes it memorable. The travel described is also unexpectedly direct, with enough detail to carry the plot without swamping it in detail. Similarly, the characterisation is enough to make them interesting without overwhelming the plot with lots of back story.
Of course, the book is more than an homage to D&D or even Tolkien. Along the way there is commentary about religion, war, the importance of light and darkness, of loyalty, faith and friendship.
Despite this being an older Tchaikovsky novel, I was also pleased that those strengths seen in Adrian’s more recent work are also on display here. Spiderlight still has those elements that make his more recent books eminently readable – humour, great characterisation, pleasing world building. If nothing else it reminds me that Adrian is just as at home writing Fantasy as he is his now-better known SF.
And if you’ve not tried Adrian’s Fantasy writing before, this is a great place to start. Recommended.
© 2025 Mark Yon
Hardback | Pan Macmillan / Tor
SPIDERLIGHT by Adrian Tchaikovsky
September 2025 | 288 pages
Spiderlight was first published in serial form in Aethernet in 2013, then by 2016 by Tor in the US.
ISBN: 978 103 5071 579
