Why this book:   The final book in Colin Wilson’s Spider World Series, following The Desert, The Tower, The Fortress, The Delta, and The Magician.  In some configurations of the Spider World series, the first three books are combined into one, entitled The Tower, followed by The Delta, The Magician , and this book is volume 4 – the final in the series.  

Summary in 5 Sentences. This is the final book in Colin Wilson’s Spider World Sci Fi series, and picks up where The Magician leaves off. Niall – the series protagonist – takes off alone to find and confront the Magician in Shadowland in hopes of saving his brother’s life and building an alliance between Spider World and Shadowland, which the Magician rules. Probably 2/3 of the book is Niall’s trip to find Shadowland during which he  confronts  non-corporeal beings, human-like beings who have evolved differently, and the remains of earlier human civilizations. During his  Odyssey,  he is joined by a renegade  spider from Spider World and together they navigate and deal with the challenges of finding Shadowland.  When they finally find and enter Shadowland, they find that life and reality are very different from what Niall -and we – are accustomed to.  Before  ultimately confronting the evil Magician, they spend several days exposed to supernatural and other high tech advances that the Magician had made real in Shadowland.   

My Impressions: A strange and different story, following the protagonist of the entire Spider World series, Niall into a land of different beings, different physical laws, and a different sense of reality.   It seems that Wilson intended to expose the reader to alternate realities, beings and entities which many believe actually do exist in our world beyond our cognitive awareness  – on what some have called the astral plane.   

The story itself is a Joseph Campbell-esque Hero’s journey – Niall leaves his comfortable world and puts himself at great risk for a cause greater than himself.  He leaves his comfortable world to seek and find the Magician – a super powerful and apparently evil being who lives in a land, far away from Spider World.    Niall  has been led to believe that only the Magician has the power to cure/save his brother, who is suffering from an unknown illness as a result of touching a blade that the Magician had forged for one of his soldiers. He also hopes to build a truce or alliance with the Magician between Shadowland and Spider World.

Two thirds of the book is Niall’s journey from Spider World to ind Shadowland, during which he encounters a variety of different beings and seemingly, different laws of nature.  The chameleons rescue him from an accident, nurture him and teach him some of their own powers.   He is often confused by what he is seeing and experiencing – and to deal with and respond to strange and new circumstance and creatures, he calls on his exceptional power to connect telepathically with the chameleons and other beings – some human-like, but in one case a bird, which allows Niall’s consciousness to step into that of the bird, and see  the world through its eyes. 

Also at one point during his journey, he connects with a renegade spider, Captain Makanda who’d been exiled from Spider World, and the two decide to travel and work together – that is an interesting dimension of this story. These two are former enemies, and very different beings but they develop a mutually supportive and trusting bond which gets them through many a close call.  During their journey in search of Shadowland and the Magician, they find remnants of earlier human civilizations and Niall is able to psychically connect with the beings who’d lived there. (another of Wilson’s nods to a different understanding of time and space)

Eventually they connects with a group of huge, human like creatures he calls Trolls who live outside of but near Shadowland and know something of it. They assist him and Captain Makanda  with advice and a crystal amulet with special powers, and which they told Niall would be a key in his interactions with the Magician.

Eventually Niall and Captain Makanda find and are able to enter Shadowland and are greeted warmly by the Magician’s representatives, and are shown around the incredible civilization that the Magician had created. But they sense that their arrival was not a surprise, and that the warm greeting they received was part of a different agenda.  The futuristic world that the Magician had created in Shadowland gives Wilson  a chance to  explore up and downsides to some of the technologies that he was seeing being developed for us living in this reality, when (he wrote the book in the early 21st century. )   A few of which: 

• The Magician had experimented with creating better humans by manipulating DNA and some of the results were pretty bizarre and even horrific.
• The Magician was a mad scientist –  amoral, secretive and obsessed with his own power.  His subjects were merely means for him to experiment with his theories that he hoped, would increase his and Shadowland’s power if/when his experiments succeeded. His humans were like lab rats for his experiments and plans. 
• One of his experiments at managing procreation had backfired and women were not able conceive, and their population was thereby in danger – reminding one of Communist China’s efforts to reduce their population, as well as  declining populations today in the developed world. 
• To keep the population engaged and entertained,  the Magician and his scientists created an entertainment arcade which allowed participants to enter a wide variety of virtual worlds and to psychically experience all thrills of whatever adventure they wanted, without physical risk. Kind of like simulated rock climbing or carrier landings. This was meant to offset the boredom and lack of opportunities for the real experience, similar to how video games and virtual reality for many in our world have become preferable to real experience – real courage not required. 
• They had a population of factory workers who were kept happy with safety, routine, predictability, and other simple  physical pleasures, but who were separate from the elite classes.  
• Marriage and committed relationships were forbidden, and seen as a threat to the most efficient functioning of society.
• People were cowed by the power of the Magician as authority figure – not unlike in many authoritarian states. The Magician ruled with great physical and psychic power and ultimately,  thru intimidation.

When Niall was transiting the lands between Spider World and Shadowland and he experienced reality shifts and bizarre creatures with unusual capabilities, there were times it almost seemed like a psychedelic experience.  The amulet that he wore, which  gave him immense focus and energy when he needed it, exhausted him afterward.  It made me think of cocaine and its attraction.

In the end, the Magician’s true intent becomes known – to dominate Niall and eventually Spider World.  Niall and Captain Makanda are put into prison and Niall must rely on his strengths of character and his psychic abilities to save himself, his brother, Captain Makanda and his mission to build a bridge between Spider World and Shadowland. 

NIALL is the hero of the entire Spider World series.  His character reflects the values of the author .  I believe Niall’s character is one of the more interesting aspects of the book.  He is humble, curious, and courageous.  He is also not physically imposing, especially compared to  those who oppose him – the Spiders and his enemies in Shadowland are physically very strong. Niall then must use the tools he has – his mind and psychic strength, his imagination, creativity, and telepathic abilities to counter their efforts to control him and prevail.  He slowly, and with all due humility, realizes his gift of strong mental and telepathic powers, and over the course of the series, develops them and his own associated strong intuitive senses – largely by learning to blank his mind, shut out fear, anxiety and emotion, and thereby become completely receptive to signals around him that are otherwise not perceptible. 

 Niall was courageous but also had fear, and knew that he was physically and psychically vulnerable.  The Magician made that clear to him,and he realized his vulnerability  when confronting the Magician, found himself on the defensive and was overwhelmed.  When he found himself in trouble or under threat, he would quiet his mind,  listen to the environment and his heart, and take action on what occurred to him. These qualities are attributes that I assume Colin Wilson saw in many if not most of the shamans he explored in his books The Occult and Mysteries.  My sense is that Wilson chose to  use his literary license to somewhat exaggerate the many occult versions of reality that had been described to him in his research. Indeed I believe that with some skepticism believed in these not-easily-perceived realities that  were beyond his own ability to perceive or access, due to his rationally based up-brining and understanding of the world. 

While the series is long and the path to the end is winding. and occasionally windy, it was fun to read about our hero’s adventures, trials and tribulations in this imaginative world with its  unseen entities and new physical rules, and a very human character’s interaction with it all, using powers not unlike what many shamans and spiritual teachers tell us we all have.  

I found a good one page summary of the entire Spider World series which is worth looking at for anyone interested.  It is at:  https://raintaxi.com/sspider-world/