Song of Scarabaeus

In a universe where Old Earth is a distant memory and mankind has colonized numerous other planets, Edie has a unique gift: her skills are integral to the terraforming of newly discovered (or conquered) planets to make them inhabitable for humans. So when Edie is kidnapped by the crew of a rogue spacecraft, she knows immediately that they want to utilize her special talents for their own ends. To make sure she complies, they’ve assigned her a bodyguard: Finn is a lower-class former soldier whose job is to guard Edie’s life at all costs, and his brain will literally explode if she dies. Bound by a common desire to escape captivity, Edie and Finn must formulate a plan while trying not to run afoul of either their captors or the show more all-powerful corporation that runs the universe.

I don’t normally read much, but I’m trying to branch out, and this book seems ideal for someone like me: while there’s plenty of scientific-sounding jargon in the novel, at bottom it’s a very character-driven story. Edie is a typical heroine in many ways – tough, smart, scarred by her past – but I really liked that her strength was in her intelligence rather than physical prowess. The novel judiciously uses flashbacks to reveal Edie’s past in a way that gradually makes sense of the present. I also enjoyed Finn’s character, but I’d like to know even more about him and the development of his relationship with Edie. Good thing there’s a sequel! Overall, this book was a real page-turner, though not particularly cutting-edge for its genre, and I look forward to reading Children of Scarabaeus. show less

SONG OF SCARABAEUS is a winner. I don't usually like sci-fi, so I cottoned onto the book despite its genre, not because of it.

It's got some killer twists and turns, and Creasy set up her two leads - Edie and Finn - as opposites in every way. That makes the development of their relationship interesting as they feel one another out, and makes them a very strong team when they work together.

The plot sets off like an avalanche, and the pace is quick and exciting all the way through. But Creasy makes time for character development and backstory, too. At the beginning, Edie is abducted and her captors set a course for the planet Scarabaeus. A key event in Edie's past took place there, and the closer we get, the more we learn about what she show more did and why. Once they arrive on Scarabaeus, the biggest shock isn't finding out who the bad guy is. It's seeing the consequences of choices Edie made years before.

These plotlines, one extending forward and the other back, weave together really well and work as a whole. The romance element is strong, but not dominant. The writing itself is elegant, a pleasure to read, and the worldbuilding imaginative and interesting, without ever crowding out the story.

Highly recommended. show less

I loved this book. Wonderful characters, fast paced action, strong world building, and immersion into the world instead of info-dump, which I always prefer. I haven't read much Sci-Fi, but I love the Sirantha Jax series and this one ranks right up there with Jax. Scarabaeus is more sciencey and technical than Jax--the main character, Edie, is a hardcore bio techie, and with the quick immersion into the world, she's throwing futuristic tech terms around and I'm like, whoa, slow down! Not confusing, per se, but not fly-through reading, either. But once I got 30 or so pages in, I was off & running.Edie is a wonderful character, a woman who uses her brains to beat the bad guys. How novel. ;) And she is so wonderfully empathetic, and able to show more see the gray when others only see black and white. I love that in a character. And a real person, for that matter. ;)I usually don't love female characters who need a man to physically protect them, but Edie & Finn have a great partnership--if Finn's muscle doesn't solve a problem, Edie's brains do, and vice versa. Not everyone can kick ass, all I ask for is a female character who has something to offer. Besides her womanhood, of course.And Finn. Love him. A strong, stoic, tortured hero. My fave kind. A war vet who was neither decorated nor honored, instead, he ended up a POW/slave. I always love reading about guys like Finn, and watching him learn to trust again, and to begin caring again about the world that shit on him so badly. Baby steps. But I like baby steps. It's just so much more realistic. I'm not a fan of characters who undergo a lobotomy because they've met their stupid soul mate. Gag me. show less

You may also read my review here: http://www.mybookishways.com/2011/03/review-song-of-scarabaeus-by-sara.html

4.5 Stars
Song of Scarabaeus opens with Edie Sha’nim being kidnapped by pirates, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for her. They want her to use her talent to help them release a couple of Crib serfs, so she goes along for the ride. Then she founds out they’ve created a mental leash between her and one of the serfs, Finn, and her goals abruptly change. If Finn goes out of range, the leash will explode in his brain, killing him. If Edie dies, he will too. When Edie finds out that the pirates are stealing Crib technology to help Fringe worlds, she starts to think that maybe working with them isn’t all that bad, but nothing show more is as it seems, and Edie must make choices that could not only end her life, but Finn’s as well.

I loved this book, just loved it! It reminded me a bit of Ann Aguirre’s Sirantha Jax series, although Edie and Sirantha are very different characters. I’m a relative sci-fi newbie, and usually shy away from hard sci-fi, which this isn’t, but it does have some elements that a newbie might have trouble with at first. No worries though! You get used to the lingo, and Ms. Creasy paints such a full and layered world that will pull you in and not let you go until the last page.

Edie is a talented cypherteck, which means that she has the power to seed and terraform new worlds using biocyph technology. She is a valuable commodity, one that the corporate conglomerate Crib, not to mention the Fringe, will do just about anything to get their hands on. I loved the sexual tension between Edie and Finn and the relationship that the author creates between them is intense, but at the same time tender, and I enjoyed peeling back the layers of Finn’s quiet and strong personality. There’s plenty of adventure here, and the deep space setting serves to make every nuance of the novel that much richer, and foreboding in its complexity. There’s something about good space opera that I absolutely love, and Song of Scarabaeus is a mature and exquisite addition to the genre! It was also nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and it's a well deserved nomination! show less

A BOOK ABOUT SPACE BANDITS?! HELL YES!

Fergie Ferg, back me up here.

We're Space Bandits! Here we come... We're coming for ya.
Space Bandits! Here we come... We're taking ya higher.

Why you might be interested:

It takes cues from Battlestar Galactica - large cast of interesting characters and similar wardrobe (gold flight suits for pilots, tank tops with cargo pants, etc...)

Uses similar tech and future speak from [book:Grimspace|1828067] - using technology to interface with nature, and in this case, linking to the human mind or biological environments.

It's reminiscent of Mass Effect - with it's names, tone and setting.

Has the feel of Firefly - a cast of outcasts, scouring the universe looking for shady investments.

An element of [book:Ender's show more Game|375802] - an anti-gravity battle game.... For adults!

_______________________________

Song of Scarabaeus is hard science fiction romance. You're probably thinking, "Oooooh yeah." But when I say "hard", I'm talking about the technology. Get your minds out of that sex gutter!!

There is a lot of technical language. However, this book actually has a strong urban fantasy vibe, with the exception of having sci-fi jargon, instead of paranormal slang. It can be confusing at times, but no more complex than the most in-depth urban fantasies. It's just a different type of language that can take some adjustment if you aren't a sci-fi reader.

Our heroine, Edie, is a cross between River from Firefly and Jax from Grimpsace.

She was taken from her family by a corporation at a young age to train her "special" abilities. She is able to interact with technology through wires embedded in her fingertips and an implant in her brain, and she can control the electrical impulses to certain types of tech with her brain, telling it what and what not to do.

Almost 20 percent into the book, we start to get Edie's back story. The lengthy wait actually felt very refreshing as I am not really a fan of prologues and immediate infodumps. I need some Gorram ACTION!! Thank the Lords of Cobol, that's what happened in this book.

The love interest, Finn, is the kind of man who says very little with his mouth, but says all kinds of naughty things with his eyes. This particular book is lighter on the romance and allows the relationship to develop slowly and naturally. Definitely not a quickie space romp.

As you might have seen from my one What can I say? I've been a slacker. status update: Haller is a prick! He makes me so angry. So angry that I want to smother him in the goo from the inside of a frakkin Cadbury egg. Wait - that doesn't sound like much of a punishment. Submerge him in it! No, maybe not that either. Damn. Sorry, I can't stop thinking about Cadbury eggs. Oh!! I could convince that lion that dresses up like the Cadbury bunny to go all RAWR on him. Yeah, let's go with that.

Now I'm not sure if I'm reaching here, but the author seems to throw in quite a few science fiction homages. Like the section of space called the "Fringe". Or the character Rackham, possibly named for Mazer from Ender's Game.

Did I mention that this book is about SPACE BANDITS? Space bandits who plan to steal terraforming technology that helped create an entire world. It is one hell of a whirlwind train job. Except, this time the train is a planet. A living breathing freaking planet, that doesn't NOT want to be taken advantage of.

If you need a little more persuasion, I guess I'll allow you to check out the Book Trailer. Or read the excerpt on Amazon. The first part of the book is great, but it gets waaaay better.

The paperback is available on Amazon for about 5 dollars used and the Kindle edition is $7.99.

It was a Eco-rad fighting, nodespace jumping, wet tech hacking, biocyph stealing, hanging from the vines and getting fighting against the vines type of good time. See, the language easily becomes second nature once you get used to it. Now, I have a ton of new words from more fantastical worlds in my encyclopedia de brain.

In case you couldn't tell, I LOVED this book. I am about to internally combust from the excitement that this series could be epic. But I will refrain, since that sounds rather uncomfortable.

Onto the next!! show less

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. show more 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. show less

The premise: ganked from BN.com: Trained since childhood in advanced biocyph seed technology by the all-powerful Crib empire, Edie's mission is to terraform alien worlds while her masters bleed the outlawed Fringe populations dry. When renegade mercenaries kidnap Edie, she's not entirely sure it's a bad thing . . . until they leash her to a bodyguard, Finn--a former freedom fighter-turned-slave, beaten down but never broken. If Edie strays from Finn's side, he dies. If she doesn't cooperate, the pirates will kill them both.

But Edie's abilities far surpass anything her enemies imagine. And now, with Finn as her only ally as the merciless Crib closes in, she'll have to prove it or die on the site of her only failure . . . a world called show more Scarabaeus.

My Rating

Must Have: This book is not the romance you think it is. Not by a longshot. Good news for SF fans who want minimal romance, but that may be bad news for readers who want more romance than not in their SF. That said, I think Creasy strikes a wonderful balance: this is an SF story with solid romantic tension that zigs when you think it should zag, and that's enjoyable when you've got certain expectations about a hero and a heroine being the primary focus of a book. The SF portion of the story is pretty cool and interesting, and Creasy manages to keep the pages turning with just the right amount of action. The only complaint I have is that this book KIND of ends on a cliffhanger. But it's not the kind of cliffhanger that has you furious when you realize there's no more pages, but the kind that clearly resolves the story but you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's more. And there is: I confirmed it on the author's website. She turned in book two back in August. Now, how long this series is going to be is still a mystery to me, but I won't hesitate to pick up the next installment. The story and the tension seems to be moving along at just the right pace, and the characters are worth following. This book still reminds me of Ann Aguirre's Grimspace in an odd way, but I can't pinpoint why exactly because the stories themselves, let alone the characters, are so different. But I think if you like Grimspace, you'll enjoy this. :)

Review style: The biggest thing I want to talk about is how this book totally defies its cover and how it's more SF than it is romance and why readers should give it a shot. Vague spoilers for the romance, but that's about it. The full review is in my LJ for anyone who's interested, and as always, comments and discussion are most welcome.

REVIEW: Sara Creasy's SONG OF SCARABAEUS

Happy Reading! show less