I really enjoyed Sara Creasy’s first novel, Song of Scarabaeus, and I was very excited when I got wind of the sequel. Children of Scarabaeus lives up to my hopes based on how absolutely awesome the first book is. The plot didn’t progress quite as smoothly as it did in the first book, but the characters and relationships are complex, and the line between good and evil is even blurrier than before.
I loved the tenuous relationship between Edie Sha’nim and Finn in the first book, and it grows organically in this one. Edie is a bit of a distant character; this is probably thanks to her lack of a normal childhood and being raised to only have one purpose, to work as a cypherteck, and she’s only just begun to try to discover herself outside of that role. Finn, such a mystery in the first book, slowly opens up in this one, and we start to see what makes this guy tick, why he fights against the Crib and why he’s falling for Edie.
The supporting characters are very nicely fleshed out, from recurring character Cat to Liv Natesa, Edie’s Crib handler. The inclusion of the cypherteck trainee children made me wary at first, as it seemed like too easy a thing to trigger Edie’s emotions, but they ended up growing on me. Edie has to basically save the world, and using kids as a metaphor for that is a bit heavy handed to me, but the kids themselves are interesting, sympathetic characters, and that thankfully keeps them from becoming simple plot devices to evoke an emotional reaction in Edie and the reader.
The progression of events unfortunately wasn’t as smooth as it could have been. In the beginning of the book, it jumped from situation to situation: they’re in the spaceport, trying to steal the toxin that keeps Edie alive; they’re escaping; they’re in cryosleep; they’re on the Crib ship. It wasn’t until halfway through, once Edie had settled into a semi-normal routine with the Crib, that I felt like things were starting to move in a more orderly fashion. Don’t get me wrong; I like being surprised by sudden plot twists, but these weren’t really twists. They were things that had to happen to get Edie and Finn where they needed to be, and those things just didn’t fit into the overarching plot terribly smoothly.
The characters and fantastic worldbuilding more than make up for it, though, and after I’d made it through those jerky first pages, I was sucked right into the world once again. This is great science fiction, with plenty of technology and philosophy to sink your teeth into, but with a very human, emotional story at its heart. Great stuff.
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