Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Book Review

Pauline Morgan

Fantasy novels often contain a number of over-familiar tropes. There is the battle between Light and Dark, with, often, a band of heroes battling against an evil wizard who wants to enslave the world. A prophecy that the heroes have to fulfil in order to achieve their aim and a journey dotted with obstacles are essential elements of the story . In Spiderlight, Tchaikovsky takes these and tries to put a spin on them to turn the predictable into the unexpected.

              The group of heroes comes fully formed with no time wasted on how they got together or how the quest was instigated. There are five of them. Dion is a priestess of the light and has a magical disc, which can generate the light of the god Armes as holy protection. Penthos is a wizard who, if not kept in check, will set fire to anything. Harathes is a warrior and Cyrene an archer, both having their own reasons for being part of the team. The fifth member is Lief, whose skills as a thief can be useful despite his tendency to avoid conflict. The book opens with them battling through a forest that is the domain of giant spiders.

              The prophecy that has sent them on the quest says that the Dark Lord Darvezian can only be killed by the fang of the Mother of Spiders, and they can only reach him along the ‘spiders’ way’. Having killed a lot of the giant spiders, Dion negotiates a truce with the Mother. They will leave her alone if she gives them one of her fangs and a map to get them to the Dark Lord along the spider-way. She agrees but says that spiders don’t have maps, but she will instruct one of her children to go with them to show them the way. This introduces Nth.

              Penthos uses his magic to convert Nth from a spider to something that could pass as human on a dark night. As this is a quest, there are a number of encounters on the way and a lot of bickering between members of the party as well as jealousy and misunderstandings as Penthos and Harathes try to hit on Dion and Cyrene respectively, only to be repulsed. It is surprising that they actually make it as far as the Dark Lord’s domain (this is a fantasy quest, so at least some of them have to get there). Of the characters, Lief and Nth stand out. Nth, in particular, is well envisioned as a creature who finds himself out of place and unlikely ever to return to his original shape or brood.

              The book as a whole has a feeling of being a first draft and not as well rounded as some of Tchaikovsky’s other work but if it is read as a pastiche of all the other sword and sorcery quest novels that have flooded the shelves since Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings there are going to be readers who appreciate it.