Spiderlight: Take These Sad Tropes and Make Them Better
by A. E. Decker
You’ve heard of the Dark Lord. You don’t even need to be a reader of fantasy literature. If you’ve played D&D, or even overheard some friends talking about it, or casually watched The Lord of the Rings, or dimly remember tales of Narnia, you know their name. Sauron. The White Witch, the White Walkers. The Wicked Witch of the West. (Although I hear her wickedness may have been misrepresented.) Whatever they call themselves, they are the great force of unquestionable evil that must be vanquished (after a certain period of anguish and adventure) by the good guys.
One of those adventures usually concerns giant spiders. Evil ones, of course.
It’s a beautifully simple narrative structure, with clearly drawn battle lines and never any doubt which side the reader should be standing on. The Good people tend to be beautiful. Their weapons are enchanted swords, magical orbs, shiny shoes, and the power of Light itself. The Evil folk lurk in darkness. Fearing the light, they fight with trickery, venom, and brute force. Fang and claw. Their features are twisted and cruel and inhuman.
Or, they’re spiders.
Such a simple narrative. Black and white. So comforting, as the majority of humankind inevitably stand on the “white” side with only a few traitors joining the bulk of ogres and orcs and giant spiders making up the “black” company.
Enter Adrian Tchaikovsky, subject of last month’s interview in The Bethlehem Writers Roundtable. Tchaikovsky, a well-known invertebrate enthusiast, apparently took a good look at these tropes—particularly the ones pertaining to spiders—and said, “Excuse me?”
The result is Spiderlight, his 2013 fantasy novel.
The world of Spiderlight is instantly recognizable to even the most casual consumer of fantasy literature. There’s a Dark Lord. A grand quest to defeat him. The merry band of misfits on the quest seem, at first reading, to have stepped straight out of a D&D guidebook. There’s Dion, the righteous priestess of Light. Penthos, the powerful mage. Harathes, the hulking warrior. Cyrene is a world-weary ranger, and Lief, the clever thief. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing, except that the first chapter of the book is seen not through the eyes of adventurers on a noble quest, but from the perspective of Nth, a giant spider who is witnessing his home being invaded and his family murdered by a gang of interlopers.
This beginning is an immediate signal that all is not as it seems. Readers are not usually expected to sympathize with giant spiders. It’s impossible, however, not to identify with Nth’s fear and pain as Dion and her gang threaten his kin with genocide unless his mother hands over the two prophesied keys to defeating the Dark Lord: one of her own fangs, and a map of the secret path into the Dark Lord’s lands.
And things only get worse for Nth from there. To save her family, Nth’s mother gives over the fang, puts knowledge of the path’s location into Nth’s head, and sends him off as a sacrificial victim with Dion’s party. Because no one in Dion’s group can bear the presence of a giant spider, Penthos the mage promptly transforms poor Nth, now called Enth, into a humanoid monstrosity they tolerate . . . only slightly better.
And these are the Good Guys. And yes, they very firmly believe they are the Good Guys. Especially Dion, who wields the power of Light that all Dark creatures, including Enth, shrink from. Light is Good and Dark is Evil. So simple. Except, as the heroes’ journey continues, questions about their quest tangle and multiply. Dion, it turns out, is not so certain of her virtue as she appears to be, although Penthos—actually a socially awkward pyromaniac—adores her. Ranger Cyrene is embittered by years of poor treatment from men, including the golden Harathes, who is revealed, simply, as a jerk. And Lief? It falls to the thief, the morally grubbiest member of the band, to become the voice of reason and empathy. Out of the lot of them, he is the first to feel sympathy for the poor man-spider, unwillingly conscripted into a battle not of his choosing. In a typical fantasy adventure, those on the Light side who cross over to take a peek at the Dark are traitors who must die, be redeemed, or both. In Spiderlight, it’s the mark of a compassionate mind.
Because it’s never that simple, is it? As the current success of Wicked attests, there’s always another side to a story, and once you start looking at it closely, Good and Evil are matters of perspective, often declared by the victors. Spiderlight goes further than Wicked in that it dares to question if the human viewpoint deserves to always be considered the “Good” one. Why should humans be declared virtuous solely because they are human? Don’t humans kill, rape, and trample? Hasn’t humankind been responsible for the destruction of many other creatures and their habitat? What do we look like through their eyes? Not so lighty-brighty, eh?
If this makes Spiderlight sound like a heavy read, let me assure you it’s quite the opposite. Although there are moments of pathos, particularly when in Enth’s point of view, the writing is light and breezy, the characters’ dialogue witty and engaging. It’s laugh-out-loud funny in places. There’s enough derring-do, danger, and last-minute rescues to satisfy your inner Tolkien-lover. It’s absolutely possible to read Spiderlight as nothing more than an engaging adventure story.
But it’s also something of a waste, as Tchaikovsky clearly put much time and thought into what he was trying to convey here. All too often, we think of ourselves as heroes of our own tales and deny other people their viewpoint, or shape it to fit ours. That’s other human people like us, without taking into account how we treat those who look different, hold different beliefs, or aren’t human at all. Perhaps they’re even spiders. The first job of literature is to entertain, and Spiderlight does that well. But good literature makes you think, which Spiderlight also accomplishes. Great literature might be capable of changing minds. Can Spiderlight be such a catalyst? Well . . . perhaps. Read it yourself and decide. At the very least, you’re guaranteed a rollicking great adventure.
And you’ll never look at spiders the same way again.