Why this book:  I’ve been a fan of Colin Wilson since I was in college.  I’ve read many of his books, both fiction and non-fiction. He was very proud of this Spider World Sci Fi series and so I finally decided to dive in. This is the first book in the series. 

Summary in 4 Sentences:  The book (and I assume the series) takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which humans are living in small stone-age-like tribes, trying to survive in a world dominated by killer spiders.  Insects and animals of many types have evolved to become  very large and often a grave threat to humans.  We are introduced to a family unit struggling to survive in the desert, and the protagonist, a young boy who has an innate ability to tune into the minds of other creatures, which he learns to develop. The story concludes with him being alone after the spiders find his family, kill his father and apparently enslave his mother and sister. 

My impressions:  This short book (180 pages) introduces Colin Wilson’s Spider World series by introducing the reader to the post-apocalyptic world in which humans have been forced into an almost a stone-age existence, struggling to survive in a very hostile world – facing very capable predators like the Death Spiders.  

We get to know the members of one family unit. They have a series of adventures which introduce us to the hostile world they live in,  and we get to know that family and that world through the eyes of Niall a young boy, who I believe will be a key protagonist in the series.  He and his  small hunter-gatherer family unit have little understanding of their history or of the world beyond their burrow/hiding place. They are very preoccupied with finding enough food to eat and water to drink, while avoiding detection from the Death Spiders  who are in constant search for humans from the air in their balloons.  And the Death Spiders are not the only predators who would gladly feast on human flesh – they are just the most advanced, powerful and threatening.  There are other spiders and predators who also pose a significant threat to humans. 

We travel with Niall on a couple of foraging expeditions with his father, during which we see the challenges posed by predator insects and other threats that exist in that desert world. The final expedition in the book is a several day trek to reconnect with another larger group of humans which has a more highly organized social network with a well developed means of defending against the predator spiders, which allows them to live and even thrive as an organized community.  Niall wants to stay with this group but chooses to return to his family with his father.  The book concludes with Niall losing his family, and reason to be uncertain as to the fate of the other larger, better organized group. 

Niall is young, courageous, determined and possesses a mental skill at sensing/reading the environment and the minds of adversaries that I’m sure we’ll see bear fruit in the next books.