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Awix (3310 KP) rated Web in Books

Sep 6, 2019 (Updated Sep 6, 2019)  
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John Wyndham | 1979 | Science Fiction/Fantasy
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
John Wyndham's final novel revisits a number of his themes and has the odd good passage, but you can tell the author has struggled with it. A group of idealists looking to create a perfect society discover they have made a bad choice of site: the location in question, a remote Pacific island, is already overrun by vast swarms of social spiders - possibly the result of nuclear testing in the region (or, failing that, a curse from the original islanders, displaced by the colonial powers).

Sounds like it has promise, but it takes a very long time to properly get going (the spiders don't appear until the second half of the book) and it's a bit unclear what points Wyndham is trying to make. Some of the divergences from the classic Wyndham formula are a little curious; the protagonist is older, and the general tone more fatalistic than in his better-known books. Fairly readable, but it lacks the big ideas and memorable imagery of his best novels.