The set up

- humanity decided to start seeding exoplanets with life, with the intent of uplifting it to sapience so we could rule over them like gods

- an ecoterrorist faction sabotaged the mission on the planet known as Kern’s World, resulting in all the monkeys that had been slated for uplifting landing on the planet dead

- the nanovirus that was designed to start artificially pushing them towards sapience searched out a new host and found some bugs that were also in the transport pods

- the species that was best able to integrate with the nanovirus were spiders. Each general is born larger and smarter than the one before

- meanwhile, human civilization collapsed. The only survivors are now in a cold storage ship slowly limping away from the toxic ruins of Earth

- the book is alternating between human drama and checking in on tbe spider civilization every couple of generations as the grow from primitive hunters to a complex civilization

- there is one human surviving in cold sleep in an orbital pod, waiting for the civilization below to develop to the point where they can pick up her endless radio broadcasts

- people are waking up from cold sleep on the colony ship fleeing Earth. The ship is falling apart and they basically have no choice but to try and take over spider planet

The spiders, meanwhile, have invented radios and made tentative contact with the orbital pod, whose human occupant have identified herself as the god that seeded their world with life

They don’t know that an entire race of gods is coming to claim their entire world

Theyve got their own shit going on

Male spiders are about half the size as females, and are treated as disposable toys/servants for the more powerful females

But when a plague almost wiped them out, males started taking over traditionally female jobs, and now they’re starting to struggle for a social revolution that ends with fewer males being eaten

(They give the spiders human names because we have to call them something, but their language is not auditory. It’s all signs and dancing and vibrations through the ground)

The Great Nest, the city where most of the spider characters live, is a highly traditional society that is resisting change

But people are starting to express outrageous ideas

The Messenger, the broadcaster in the sky, might not be god. It might be a material being like them.

Male spiders might deserve more

God

Ants reacted to the nanovirus too, but differently

An ant is not sapient

An ant colony....isn’t exactly sapient either

But it’s like a living biological computer passing scent based programming complex enough for them to figure out iron working and flamethrowers

The spiders figured out how to control the ant colonies via scent manipulation and uses them for a sort of biological industrial revolution

Fabian has figured out how to reprogram any ant colony on the spot, so even though he’s half the size of the females around him he functionally rules the city and no one realizes it