I've read the second one, too.
It has a really weird (IMO flawed) narrative arc and is much more confusing.
The second half of it mostly deals with issues translating another race's language.
And it's written from the point of view of the spiders who are trying to translate.
So you as the reader also have no idea what's going on most of the time.
Its ending leads into a direction where I decided I'm not interested in the rest of the series anymore.