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 3. 

Summary in 3 Sentences: Niall is able to hide from the Death Spiders and in the process reconnects with Jim Doggins, another human who is well ensconced in the Spider World.  Doggins believes he that there is a hidden cache of explosives and powerful weapons that were  left behind by the previous humans in a closed off ancient building called The Fortress.  He and Niall collaborate to find with what little evidence they had,  those hidden explosives and powerful weapons   When they find and demonstrate the power of these weapons, the balance of power between Niall and his team of remaining humans, and the Death Spiders shifts and it appears that a battle for dominance and freedom will ensue. 

My Impressions:  The Fortress follows immediately upon The Tower. Niall is outside the tower and realizes that he must not be seen, as punishment for being out alone at night is severe.  He has a sense of mission, to get out from under the yoke of the Death Spiders,  but knows that they are out to get him.  So where to hide – he decides that he would be most inconspicuous hiding among the other human “servants’ who do the work for the Death Spiders.

With some difficulty, Niall  is able to make it to the part of the city where the human servants work and inconspicuously joins a work party going to another area where he runs into and reconnects with Jim Doggins – a human who has a key leadership position and credibility working for the Beetles, another powerful insect group that has a mutual non-aggression treaty with the Death Spiders.  Doggins has been in this world for quite some time and knows the rules, risks, who has what power, and it seems has created a pretty lucrative life for himself working for the Beetles, protected from the Death Spiders.  But Niall learns that indeed, he is a closet revolutionary. 

Niall decides to trust Doggins and realizes that Doggins shares his desire to free the humans from domination by the Spiders and/or the Beetles. When Doggins realizes that Niall has a map of the Spider City provided him by the Steegmaster, he realizes that this map could be the key to finding “the fortress” where the earlier humans had stored their very powerful weapons – weopons that could help free them from domination by the Death Spiders.  Without permission from his masters the Beetles, Doggins leads Niall and a group of human “servant” laborers to what the map identifies as “the fortress” and after a series of close calls and a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning, they are able to locate and achieve access to the armory of the earlier humans, which includes weapons beyond the capacity of the Death Spiders to defend against. (weapons that soldiers only dream about today – lazar like hand-held weapons, with adjustable levels of intensity, from surgical to being able to destroy a city block.)

When the Death Spiders find and confront Niall, Doggins and their small team, and tell them that they have violated many of the rules of Spider World,  Niall responds that they are not accepting their rules, and insists that they be allowed to leave, and that it is his intent to free humans from their exploitation.  He does not want to kill all the Death Spiders,  but makes what he intends to be a relatively harmless show of force, demonstrating the power of these weapons. He is still unfamiliar with the weapon and inadvertently uses a high power that kills multitudes of spiders.  This is seen by the Spiders as an unforgivable act for a human and brings this explosive situation to a head. The Death Spiders all quickly leave and  Niall, Doggins and their small team head back to Beetle world.   The Master Death Spider is there waiting for them. 

This situation ultimately forces a confrontation between the Death Spiders and the Beetles who the Master Death Spider accuses of treachery, being accomplices in Niall’s empowerment and his killing of the spiders.  The Master Death Spider demands that the Beetles turn over Niall to them or he will nullify their non-aggression treaty, which will mean war. 

The Beetle leader refuses, but insists that Niall and Doggins must either leave or give over their weapons and submit to the Beetles to help avert war.  The book concludes with Niall and Doggins choosing to leave Beetle world (and obviously Spider World) to go to the Delta where they might find a clue as to what next.  They also want to avoid the prospect of war between Beetles and the  Death Spiders, and an unknown role for Niall and Doggins and their small team of humans – who, though a small group, still have devastatingly powerful weapons.