this was a great sequel, I enjoyed the first book in the Arachne duology series. The characters were great and I really enjoyed the scifi novel.

Arachne’s Exile is a follow up to Arachne’s Crime, a two-book series by L. Bennett Christopher. In this book, the crew of Arachne, an A.I. driven explorations ship, is being mentored by aliens to prepare them for inclusion into a federation of disparate alien representatives. The humans are not yet fully trusted as they had inadvertently caused a lethal catastrophe to the aliens who are now in charge of their mentorship. It is this harmful occurrence, often referred to in Arachne’s Exile but never disclosed, that made me realize that Arachne’s Exile is not a stand-alone book. That lack of plot development resulted in my not being able to fully appreciate the significance of the human-alien dialog that took place in the first two chapters. The book began to take on its direction after that.

The human crew is divided with one faction feeling the need to atone for the catastrophe and the other being angry for the retaliation that was taken out on them by some of the aliens who were harmed. With so few humans in the mentored group, this division makes acclimation of the humans into the alien association difficult. Alien historical culture and political contexture is non-disclosure by their mentors leading to misunderstanding and suspicion on the part of the crew. This results in them falling into an alliance with an alien terrorist faction, which leads to the near-total destruction of the power source behind the alien alliance group’s strength. Realizing what they’ve done, the humans effectively stop their most vengeful crewmates from completing their murderous efforts and take further action to bring the terrorist’s leader to judgment.

While the book was a good read once I got beyond the need for background events, I can only recommend a commitment to read it with the provision that you read Arachne’s Crime first. I should have stopped reading this book and gone to the first book to read it. Combined, the two books should make a great story.