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Edie Sha’nim and her bodyguard and lover Finn are inextricably bound to each other—not only by the bonds of affection or duty, but by the chip in Finn’s head that will explode if he strays too far from Edie’s side. Having escaped the world of Scarabaeus, now a biological nightmare, they enter cryosleep to try to throw the Crib off their trail.
Edie formerly worked for the Crib terraforming worlds, and Scarabaeus was her only failure. But some in the Crib think that Scarabaeus’s rampant growth might hold the key to terraforming worlds at many times the rate that can currently be accomplished. They recapture Edie and use Finn as a bargaining chip to gain her cooperation, but she’s not their only weapon in this fight. Edie discovers the unthinkable: young children with cypherteck abilities brought into space and twisted to revere the Crib and its goals. Edie can’t stand by while children are exploited, nor can she resist the lure of Scarabaeus when she has a chance to right the wrongs of the Crib.
Song of Scarabaeus was praised when it first came out for its originality and its unique main character. Admittedly, I like the book too, but I saw more promise in it than was actually manifested. In Children of Scarabaeus, however, that promise finally becomes a reality. Rather than Edie running all over the galaxy to avoid Crib agents and doing little more than obsess over her “leash” to Finn, she actually gets more of a chance to act.
Edie gets to do some evolving, at least emotionally. Whereas she spent a lot of the first book obsessing about Finn and the “leash”, and bemoaning how horrible the Crib is, this second book lets her actually do something about what she perceives as being problems. She’s able to turn her emotions into concrete actions and commit to them. She’s taken a giant step forward and become bolder, more willing to take risks for what she believes in.
The problem that I saw with Song of Scarabaeus is that readers didn’t get to know Edie within the framework of the broader universe before she’s kidnapped away from it. In my opinion, that hampered the worldbuilding to a certain degree. In Children of Scarabaeus, Edie spends time with the main entities that control terraforming in the galaxy. Readers get to see the workings of a normal terraforming operation, albeit one that’s stepped up a bit time-wise. Showing the main character in those situations allows readers to get a glimpse of how the government runs and how it affects the general public.
This also lets readers appreciate the way things ought to be running before everything falls apart. The hints that something is wrong build slowly until things come to a rather violent head in the last third of the novel, and groundwork that was laid in the first book comes to fruition.
I did find the world of Scarabaeus to be vividly painted and intriguing. I almost wish that the novel had taken readers to a world that had been successfully terraformed, just so it could be compared to the craziness of a world gone insane with biological disaster. But that’s a small wish on my part, as Scarabaeus has plenty to interest even the most jaded reader. The author’s extrapolations of how a maxed-out evolutionary race would play itself out lead to some of the most memorable—and most chilling—scenes in the novel.
Children of Scarabaeus is a compelling and gripping tale of desperate actions and the consequences that they bring, with a touch of romance thrown in to sweeten the pot. The little details and nuances that make a good science fiction novel leap into stark and vivid relief. I usually like fantasy more than science fiction, but this novel held me entranced from start to finish.
This book was provided by the publisher as an e-ARC through NetGalley.
This book will be available on March 29.
Great review. I'm reading Children now.
ReplyDeleteJust finished it, I really liked it. I agree with you, it would have been nice to have seen a world that was the norm, which it turns out still would have ended up collapsing in time, but at least we got to see what the destructiveness of a planet turned to mash was. I was a little frustrated by near the ending as I didn't get her decision. She'd done a good job of fooling everybody else, why she decided to do what she did, but thank god for finn. Trying to avoid spoilers is hard!
ReplyDeleteI think that this story might have been better with a bit of a change in structure. It's almost like Song of Scarabaeus was the middle of the story, and Children of Scarabaeus was the framework within which SoS should have occurred.
ReplyDeleteI did like seeing what would eventually happen to the planets, because the author gave a really good visual to work with.
Yeah, spoilers are hard to avoid... that's why I sometimes just tag my reviews as containing spoilers and go about my business. :)
I think Edie's decision at the end had more to do with her sense of responsibility for the whole situation than anything else. At least, that's what I got out of it, but there may be more to it that I didn't pick up on.