Is the human race worth preserving? I go back and forth on this one. When I read [b:The Three-Body Problem|20518872|The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1)|Liu Cixin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1415428227l/20518872.SY75.jpg|25696480] I sided with the invading aliens. In this book, chapters alternate between sides and I sided with each alternately but I was not excited about how the humans turned out after centuries of humanness. Ms. Kern was probably right to wish a do over though I'm not clear how this nanovirus can do all the tricks claimed for it. Hard to see a virus as the good guys during a pandemic.

But if evolution is really just trial and error, I can't see how you can speed that up significantly. And then these viruses become some way of recognizing kinship, but the humans already had that when they started and you can see how they turned out.

So, some interesting ideas with the ants and the chemicals and the alternate technologies but underneath the usual themes, even if done better than the average space opera.

The humans got to live a long time by sleeping through most of it, but the spiders, instead of living a long time just had the same names as their ancestors? And we readers just treat them as if they're the same spiders they're named after. It kinda worked but I think it's weird.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because it ended better than it could have (though it really was too long).