Children of Time

If the ark ship never existed this book would have been far better. Sure, some other conflict would have had to be contrived but the humans were so boorish, predictable, and obnoxious that I could barely finish the book

The overall ideas and characterization of the spiders over the generations were great and super interesting but the humans? Ugh. They were the worst.

Holsten Mason is a mostly agentless, spineless sap who can't even be bothered to speak up when he believes the spiders are sentient at the end thereby setting up an entirely manufactured dramatic showdown. It was painful reading nearly every section from his perspective.

The ending isn't remotely plausible. The humans are both too quick to start fighting and too quick to stop. If the humans are going to be so shallow as to completely ignore the evidence before them of an intelligence from the planet, there's no way the virus causes them to give up their fight so quickly.

Quite the deus ex virus as well. We've seen the spiders themselves nearly wipe out major competitors for purely religious reasons but we're supposed to believe this viral kumbaya moment will have all the humans instantly turn docile when they believe the future of their race depends on it? No way.

The humans are caricatures and only the spiders have, any depth and nuance which is pretty ironic.