Fiction Reviews
Spiderlight
(2013/2025) Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tor, £20, hrdbk, 279pp, ISBN 978-1-035-07157-9
Yet another Adrian Tchaikovsky book to fill my shelves, and at this rate I‘m going to need a new shelf just to keep up with him. He’s certainly prolific – though in this instance this isn’t an entirely new work: it was first published in serialised form rather obscurely in Aethernet magazine in 2013, then later picked up by Tor in 2016, so this one’s got legs. Eight of them, I guess, because spiders play a key role in this fast moving snarky-comedy fantasy tale of the light and the dark and shades in between.
Dion is a Priestess of Armes, the righteous religion of the Light, on a holy mission to destroy the Dark once and for all by tracking the evil Dark Lord Darvezian to his lair and killing him with the fang of a giant spider. The only way to reach the Dark Castle, though, is to follow the spider path, which means making a deal with the spiders. She’s accompanied by a thief, a wizard a swordsman and a warrior woman, whose faith in her faith ranges from contempt to mild acceptance, which leads to much amusement and some tension as the novel unfolds. The story, though, belongs to the spider they bring along as a guide, transformed into something not quite human by the wizard. Nth (or Enth as he becomes) has a transformative journey through this story, and the book is probably best viewed as his story arc.
It’s all standard fantasy trope setup, from the Dark Lord and his Doomsayer enforcers to the motley ragtag band of heroes with the classic fight between light and dark, but if you’re expecting Tchaikovsky to play that hand straight I suspect you haven’t read any of this other books. He subverts the tropes deliciously, with some satisfying revelations at the denouement, and any pompous high fantasy nonsense is firmly brought down to earth with wit and charm.
I loved this book. It’s light on its feet and moves at pace. Sure, the story gives us what we’re expecting, really, and the characters rarely surprise us, but that’s not really the point here. If I have a minor quibble it’s that the development of the ostensible protagonist, Dion, gets rather lost in favour of the humanising of the spider, Enth, and I would really have liked to see much more, later on, from her point of view as her faith unravels and her perceptions of her travelling companions alter with familiarity. She’s arguably the least developed of all the major characters, sadly.
Great cover too.
Mark Bilsborough
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