This didn't work for me. It started off well enough with a group of characters who I assumed constituted an "A-story." Then we cut to a different group of small characters in a different location who I assumed were the "B-story." I figured that the stories would go back and forth from A to B until the storylines intertwined. Then we get the C-story. Okay. So there will be three storylines. No problem. Then a D-story. Huh? Then an E-story. At this point I'm really confused. An F-story. Now I'm irritated. On went a parade of multi-cultural characters with different jobs and personalities and back stories that went on longer than necessary. 
 But I hung in there expecting that surely the storylines in different parts of the country and the world would wow me by coming together in an unexpected way. The "wow" never came. The magician never showed us the rabbit in the hat. 
 The closest thing to a main character was Dr. Guyer, a spider scientist in D.C. She was likable. There's another solid character--a Minneapolis-based FBI agent. In my opinion, the book would have been a lot stronger focusing just on these two characters and the people closest to them. These two characters do meet, and there is a possible attraction, but they are separated again. 
 These "main" characters appear in maybe fifty or sixty pages of the novel, and the rest of it is other storylines. I would much rather have learned more about Guyer and the FBI agent and seen them interact than to read ten pages about two dozen other random characters. 
 But even with an ensemble cast, it still could have worked (like Footfall). But the glue that should have bound the characters together--the killer spiders--never quite materialized as a concrete threat that I could understand as a reader. The spiders are always too distant and descriptions of them are too scant. We get an occasional spider crawling out of a victim's nose, or a spider in a lab in a jar, or a blurry video on the news showing people running from what could be spiders. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it for a novel about killer spiders. I want to SEE them. Brief glimpses of the menace only work when the threat is a huge apex predator like Jaws or Godzilla. When it's a tiny menace, I want better descriptions and good detail at least on the level of The Rats or Night of the Crabs. What are the spiders actually doing to their victims in the field? Scenes are closed with a wave of spiders coming toward a character, but then it fades to black. Frustrating. Not to mention that the story is not resolved at the end. A 352-page cock tease. 
 The prose is okay and the premise was salvageable. If the author could have picked a main character and tighten the story, it would have been fine. But if you want to read a good, creepy crawly insect book I recommend The First Bird: Omnibus Edition (mites) or Invasive Species (wasps).