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A review by ahoffner
Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky
3.0
If you're a massive D&D fan and looking for a quick, fun adventure - this is it.
Spiderlight not trying to be something exhaustively original and dense - its unabashed in its embrace of the stereotypical Light vs. Dark conflict, and its Classical Party Structure of Thief, Rogue, Warrior, Priestess, Wizard. But it's reliant on these familiar structures for a reason: it lets it be ruthlessly efficient in its storytelling, relishing not in the freshness of setting but the character's internal and external conflicts.
And honestly, the characters are richly designed and fascinating, particularly those surrounding the titular literal Spider Man, a central conceit simple enough on paper but novel in its execution. The author shows such considerable skill in these characters that it is hard to fault the book significantly.
On the one hand, it's almost refreshing to be able to wrap up an entire fantasy adventure in a couple of long afternoons - the book is remarkably concise for a typical tale of this scope. But its brevity is occasionally jarring, too. The travelers sometimes teleport between paragraphs from one location to the next, consistently skipping describable transition. Perhaps some readers (who's time is presumably far more valuable than mine) would appreciate all the narrative chaff cut here.
The book seems to shove all the good dialog and character interactions, which would presumably fit nicely into some on-the-road traveling time, exclusively into taverns. Not twice but thrice the characters arrive at a location, abscond to The Tavern where they can do some dialog before (presumably) rolling for initiative.
Overall though - it was a good, clean, efficient, lighthearted adventure. That's more than enough sometimes.
Spiderlight not trying to be something exhaustively original and dense - its unabashed in its embrace of the stereotypical Light vs. Dark conflict, and its Classical Party Structure of Thief, Rogue, Warrior, Priestess, Wizard. But it's reliant on these familiar structures for a reason: it lets it be ruthlessly efficient in its storytelling, relishing not in the freshness of setting but the character's internal and external conflicts.
And honestly, the characters are richly designed and fascinating, particularly those surrounding the titular literal Spider Man, a central conceit simple enough on paper but novel in its execution. The author shows such considerable skill in these characters that it is hard to fault the book significantly.
On the one hand, it's almost refreshing to be able to wrap up an entire fantasy adventure in a couple of long afternoons - the book is remarkably concise for a typical tale of this scope. But its brevity is occasionally jarring, too. The travelers sometimes teleport between paragraphs from one location to the next, consistently skipping describable transition. Perhaps some readers (who's time is presumably far more valuable than mine) would appreciate all the narrative chaff cut here.
The book seems to shove all the good dialog and character interactions, which would presumably fit nicely into some on-the-road traveling time, exclusively into taverns. Not twice but thrice the characters arrive at a location, abscond to The Tavern where they can do some dialog before (presumably) rolling for initiative.
Overall though - it was a good, clean, efficient, lighthearted adventure. That's more than enough sometimes.