Song of Scarabaeus******
334 pages
published by EOS
science fiction
I saw this book a few times at Barnes & Noble, and a couple times at Borders. Each time I picked it up, looked at it, thought about buying it and ultimately put it down in favor of buying books that were written in first person. I am weirdly obsessive like that. Finally, because my eyes kept being drawn to it, I bought it. Boy am I glad that I did.
This book is science fiction with just a touch of romance, and a teeny bit of angst, but not enough to turn me off reading it.
Edie is a being from a planet called Talas Prime. Problem is, she was only half Talas, and half human so she was practically shunned growing up by the elders. She ends up being trained in wet-tech skills, as she was very skilled with working computers and programs. This is an era of people having splints inserted into their heads and/or finger tips to enhance their computer working. I'm not explaining it very well, and I myself don't have much computer type knowledge, but that didn't get in the way of me enjoying this excellent story.
The Crib has trained Edie to use her skills as a coder for terraforming planets for eventual colonization. She and others code seeds that are dropped on uninhabital planets. These coded seeds force climate changes that make a hostile to life planet inhabitable. This is a big money maker.
Edie is kidnapped by a rogue "rovers", people who work against the "Crib", and conglomerate type corporation that pretty much runs the universes. A serf, a man who is little more than a slave (a sentence carried out for "criminal" behavior) is put on a leash and attached to her. Not a real leash, but a splint is inserted into his brain and a code download that will explode his brain if Edie dies or he is too far away from her. He has to serve as her bodyguard. He's not too happy about it, she's not too happy about it.
Edie is kidnapped for her wet-tech skills, which also make her a target for "rads", short for radicals - a group of people who like to kill wet or op-techs so they cannot mess with the the ecology of planets.
Edie and Finn, her bodyguard must come to an understanding. He has to learn to trust her, and she has to basically do the same thing. Trust for both of them is a big deal, hard to come by. Both of them do a couple of stupid things, and both of them make some good decisions. Interesting.
There is some intrigue going on. There are betrayals and more betrayals. There is heartbreak and friendships and retribution. This is a damn good book. It's one of those books that you don't want to put down, and if you do you can't wait to be able to pick it back up again. This is one of those novels that make you hope the author writes another one.
Song of Scarabaeus is a debut novel of Sara Creasy, a woman who was born and grew up in England, moved to Australia and now lives in the United States.
Reading Challenges
Great review!
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