title: Spider Eaters: A Memoir
author: R Yang
description: <div>"By oscillating between scenes that are bland in their matter-of-fact concreteness and ones that are almost unbelievable in their nightmarish cruelty and complexity, Rae Yang skillfully evokes the bizarre and contradictory 'revolutionary' world in which she grew up in Mao's China. <i>Spider Eaters</i> is a reminder of what a traumatic history the Chinese people have undergone this century and that a country's past&#151;even when many would rather forget it&#151;always lives irrevocably on within those who experienced it."&#151;Orville Schell, author of <i>Mandate of Heaven</i><BR><BR>"How can we expect anyone to know the United States without understanding the effect the Sixties had on all of us? Similarly, how can we know China without comprehending the impact the Sixties and the Cultural Revolution had on its politics, culture, and people? Rae Yang's <i>Spider Eaters</i> goes far in building that understanding. It is a gripping memoir."&#151;Lisa See, author of <i>On Gold Mountain</i></div>
zlib_text: Forgotten Realms
  
  War of the Spider Queen: Resurrection
  
  By Lisa Smedman
  
  Acknowledgements
  
  
  Countless colleagues and friends deserve my thanks, but one above all Phil
  Athans. Thanks, my friend.  
  Eight legs, eight.  
  Clattering on the stones, ticking, ticking, tapping, tapping impatiently.  
  They were done with their battle, with their feasting, devouring their
  siblings, growing stronger with each  
  juicy bite. Bloated and spent, they stood around the octagonal stone, myriad
  eyes staring into myriad  
  eyes, eight legs eight tapping and clattering.  
  They could eat no more; they could fight no more. Exhaustion held them in
  place, as Lolth had desired  
  from the beginning. The thousands became eightthe eight strongest, the eight
  smartest, the eight most  
  devious, the eight most ruthless. One would fuse with the Yor'thae. One would
  assume the mantle of a  
  goddess, the deity of Chaos.  
  Only one, whom the others would serve . . . if the One gave them that choice
  and that chance. If not,