Change what you always thought about wasps as you immerse yourself in the wonderful world of insect life, a world of love and courage, of risk and loss.
Summer Nemesis is the gripping first novel by Adrian Harris, packed with thrills, humour and sadness in equal measure. Set against the backdrop of the Devon coastal town of Budleigh Salterton, the story follows the fortunes of a male wasp called Wilhelm as he faces a series of challenges, some so sinister that his very survival is in doubt. Searching for his elusive mate, his fortunes become irrevocably entwined with Tom Reynolds and his family as they try to enjoy their well-earned summer break.
The author says “I wanted to create a story that gives the reader a chance to change what they always thought about wasps, to experience life in the insect world around them. The novel seeks to stay faithful to how wasps actually live, so they have names only for identification within the story and they don’t communicate by speaking.
It’s a story with a difference, written from the POV of the lead wasp character, but also from the perspective his human foil and that of the lead female wasp, Wilhelmina.
The story remains as faithful as possible to how wasps really live. So, in the book, as in real life, they do not communicate with each other but communicate in different ways and they are given names only to allow humans to identify the characters. In the real world, as in the book, wasps are amazing creatures, helping to maintain the fragile eco-system of insect life, protecting crops from aphids and other pests and promoting seed germination.
Well wood masters really! Wasps start to build their nests in the spring, when the queens, emerging from their winter hibernation, chew wood into pulp, producing a thin papier mache type material. The result is beautiful, elaborate nests, increasing in size throughout the summer, eventually holding several thousand insects.
In the UK the most common wasps, the yellowjackets, are social wasps, usually living in colonies, but until late summer, the nests are ‘staffed’ exclusively by females. They spend their time working to look after and protect the colony. Some will be engineers building or repairing the nest or carers to look after the larvae. Others will be soldiers to defend the nest or foragers to gather food. It is only in the late summer that male drones are hatched to mate with, and impregnate, the fertile females who will become next years’ queens.
The life of a male wasp is quite different to that of a female. The males only appear in the late summer and spend their time hanging around waiting to seize any and every opportunity to mate. They do not have stings and once they have mated, their life’s ambition achieved, they succumb quickly to the falling temperatures and lack of food in autumn. Females are engaged throughout the summer, one generation following another, each surviving for up to four weeks, servicing the nests and their queens.
The novel’s setting is inspired by beauty of the rugged Devonshire coastline, in particular the uniqueness of the rounded pebbles that make up the beach of Budleigh Salterton, a small town set within the Jurassic Coast.
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