I enjoyed this book, but I may have enjoyed it more had I not been mislead by the title.

While there is encounters with the spider people Its not in my opinion enought to justify the title itself. As other reviews have said already "Blades of Mars" would have been more appropriate.

I would say that the last quarter of the book was probably the best part of the book, and really made me want to pick and read the last book in the Kane trilogy.

The alternate title, "Blades of Mars" is much more appropriate, as the titular character and the creature on the cover play a very small role in the book.

Although the story wasn't as gripping and fresh as the first, it was still full of likable characters and some interesting scenes.

I'll agree with the introduction, that the Kane stories are essentially a bonus three John Carter books. You could do far worse than that. :)

Not quite as enjoyable at the first. Kane returns to Mars after getting some help and financing in building a machine, especially from an author acquaintance looking to recount his tales to the public.

He helps yet another rebellion succeed, fights some spider monsters, builds an airship, stops a war, and returns to find he actually has come back to the same time period, as his betrothed is still hanging around.

"Lord of the Spiders" was a huge disappointment. First of all, the title of the novel is completely inappropriate. There is little logic or purpose behind Michael Kane's arrival in the land of the Lord of Spiders, and suffice it to say that it is inconsequential to the overall "plot" (what little there is of one) anyway. While I generally enjoyed reading this story more than I did the first in the trilogy (City of the Beast), perhaps because it reads a little less like a hack an' slash novel than the previous book in the series, the other reviewers are right. There are way too many threads left dangling by the end of the story. The characters remain as bland as they were in the first book, and the ending left me thinking "meh". Moorcock spent so much time developing random encounters throughout the novel that he had no time/space left to write a compelling climax and denouement. Oh well...

This could have been a fine pastiche of ERB's Barsoom novels; instead, it reads more like a Martian version of ERB's late novel Land of Terror. Far too many subplots are thrown into the story with little time to develop them. The whole idea of why Kane thinks he's in another time than the one where he met Shizala is never fully explained, then completely jettisoned with no further comment. There's no cohesiveness to the novel. Even the most intriguing part of the story--the spider city sequence--is quickly wrapped up with only the vaguest hint of the wonder and danger of the western continent revealed. Overall, I think the book would have been better broken into three novellas a la ERB's Moon Maid and Land That Time Forgot rather than presented as one continuous narrative that stumbles and mills about with seemingly no direction. The first book was much better. Maybe the next will give a better presentation than this did.

The second Kane outing doubtless suffers from sequel syndrome. Moorcock expands his Martian setting but the novel's picaresque structure lacks the taut focus of City of the Beast. Despite some intriguing glimpses of the ancient civilization that once controlled Mars the novel contains few suprises and wraps up rather predictably.
It's still an enjoyable read but after the previous martian adventure novels published in this line, Lord of Spiders fails to impress substantially. As I quite liked City of the Beast I hope that Master of the Pit picks the series up again.