Almost done with arc one! We've by now also reached the point where the books haven't been released officially in English yet. This installment was apparently temporarily available to read online in English during the pandemic, but has since been taken down in order to be prepped for an official release. So for now it remains unavailable in English.
Like with my previous books, I'll be basing my review off the German version. Spoilers ahead.
Simon and his friends travel to the arachnid kingdom when Ariana's life is threatened. Here, the dying Black Widow Queen asks him for a favor: to spy on her enemies by taking on the form of a brown recluse. But this proves to be a difficult task for Simon. All the while he's also still trying to get the part of the wand he needs in order to prevent Orion from winning.
It was another solid installment overall. I liked Simon in this a lot and his journey was an interesting one. I also thought the bug realm was interesting and the spy school was a neat concept. Dev was also a newly introduced character who I really liked and I was also pleasantly surprised we took a break from Orion as villain by having the Ant Queen take his place for this installment.
What I wasn't as fond of in this book, however, was how it underutilized a lot of the cast. Characters like Jam, Nolan, Felix and Winter are very much sidelined and don't do all that much. It's almost like the story forgot about them sometimes. Which sucks because A) they're great characters and B) they're a part of our main cast. In books one through three they all play big roles and by now they're a closely knit friend group who all are very important to the story. To just see a large portion of the main cast sidelined like this just kinda sucks to be honest.
I also wasn't too into the whole bug kingdom setting. While it's interesting enough and has some cool concepts going on, it didn't appeal that much to me personally. I can acknowledge it is well-written, but also that, similar to the marine setting of the last book, it's just a setting I couldn't fully get into. I'm honestly not quite sure why this is. Unlike my dislike for marine settings I do love spiders and bugs, so I'm not sure why I couldn't get fully immersed in this setting. Oh well.
Overall this is still a good book though. I do recommend it, my main gripe really is just that some of the main cast gets needlessly sidelined which wasn't fun to see.
Rating: 3.5/5
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