Why this book:   I’ve been a Colin Wilson fan for 50 years and decided to read his Spider World Sci Fi series.  This is book 2. 

Summary in 4 Sentences:  At the end of Book 1, Niall returns from food foraging to find his father dead and his mother, brother and sisters gone, all signs pointing to them having been taken as hostages by the spiders. So he follows their tracks and eventually is captured by the wolf spiders, a brave and efficient breed who work for the more intelligent and ruthless Death Spiders, and they are all delivered to the Death Spiders their masters.  Niall is then for the first time exposed to the civilization that the Death  Spiders have created and explores using his nascent telepathic powers to try to understand the humans that are working there, as well as their insect masters. At the end of the book, he meets King Kazan who has been co-opted by the Death Spiders to work for them, and Niall is faced with getting on board and submitting to the Death Spiders, or rebelling.

My Impressions: Book 1 was a prelude – to set the background for the rest of the series.  In Book two, the story really begins.  While the formidable wolf spiders are bringing Niall, his mother and brother to the city of the Death Spiders, they are met by other humans who also work for the Death spiders, to transport them in what seem like Viking long boats across a large body of water to the big city of the Death Siders. 

Upon arrival in the Death Spider city, Niall tries to sort out what kind of world he has entered, who are the players and what role will behis to play.   We learn about the impressive mental powers of the Death Spiders and Niall is delivered to his former friend King Kazan, who’d been captured long before and hsd submitted to the Death Spiders power and authoriry, and was now collaborating with them to save himself and his surviving family.  From King Kazan, Niall gets more insights into the nature of the Death Spiders and the world they run. King Kazan begins his process of bringing Niall into his arrangement of submission and acceptance. 

Niall’s mother, sister and brother were all under Kazan’s protection, and Niall reconnects with his love interests from his earlier visit to King Kazan’s kingdom. All of them are under King Kazans care and thereby gain many privileges and are protected from the Death Spiders.  But Niall  learns that the Death Spiders have a particular interest in him personally – as they see him as a unique threat to their world and power.  He discovers that a tool he’d picked up earlier while following the wolf spiders, near what appeared to be relic from the old civilization, seemed to have some special properties, which Niall doesn’t know or understand.

The book is titled The Tower because in the middle of the Death Spider’s city is a glowing white tower that has no apparent entrance and which the Death Spiders have tried wiwthout success to enter or destroy.   It is a mystery relic from when humans had controlled the land. Much of the rest of the Death Spider city consists of ruins of a former human city, occupied by those the Death Spiders control – many humans, as well as wolf spiders and others. The Death Spiders have a monopoly on power in thier kingsdom  through their formidable mental powers.  

But to Niall, the white tower is an intriguing  mystery – the Death Spiders don’t control or understand it.  This inspires Niall to sneak out one night and see if he can figure something out about it.     When he gets to the tower, when he pulls out the special tool  he has to see if it can help him enter, and notices that it is buzzing and suddenly he is inside the tower.  There he meets a hologram of a wise old man – calls himself the Steegmaster. The tower is a sort of time capsule, isolated from and uncorrupted by the Death Spiders, and it retains  technology and wisdom from when humans had occupied the earth. The Steegmaster enlightens Niall about the world he is in, how humans had evolved and why they’d left, and gives Niall some cryptic guidance before disappearing.  Then Niall then finds himself outside the tower, with some decisions to make. 

This sets up the next book – The Fortress.