The Scarab Mission

Cambias expertly combines confident worldbuilding, high stakes action, and suspenseful mystery in his second Billion Worlds space adventure (after The Godel Operation). Safdaghar, one of the billion space habitats orbiting Earth’s sun in the 10th Millennium, is in dangerous disrepair after 16 years of no contact with the outside world. The promise of riches—especially the valuable lost work of a Martian poet believed to be hidden in the habitat—lures a scrappy salvage crew comprising Solana, a woman with a mysterious aversion to seeing the faces of other humans; Atmin, a genetically engineered raven; Pera, a dino from the rings of Venus; and Utsoro, a cyborg. The salvage mission proves even more hazardous than expected when the team arrives on Safdaghar to find all of its former residents slaughtered. Now they must identify who or what killed the Safdagharians—and survive encountering it themselves. Cambias’s unconventional underdogs will win readers over, and the inevitable affection for the characters makes the climax all the more powerful. Fans of the cult TV series Firefly will have a blast. (Jan.)