Review: Good premise, but only so-so execution.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 27, 2012
More like 2.5.Just finished reading Scarab, which I thought might be interesting given the blurb about it.I am interested in things Egyptian, and over the decades I have read quite a bit about Egypt and Egyptians, their ancient history and archeology, civilization, culture, art and religious beliefs, so that the idea that the Egyptians, with an ancient and exotic civilization that was successful enough to have lasted for several millennia, might have had and based their civilization on some revolutionary, esoteric knowledge, its intersection with today's technology, and the dangerous situation that knowledge created for the people involved seemed like a winner.However, these plot elements were not handled in a way that produced a first class, very suspenseful, page-turner. The fairly sketchy story was more a short story than a full blown novel, and it just seemed pretty lifeless and derivative--Indiana Jones, all sorts of kitschy Mummy books and movies, and esoteric novels like those, for instance, of Dion Fortune, come to mind--the characters in Scarab were somewhat fleshed out, but not so fully developed that I became invested in them or really cared about them. There were also other things that hit the wrong note, such as the reckless nature of the experiments done--rearrange the Earth's magnetic field, with all the unknown consequences that might have, just for a cheap display of an aurora to impress a girl?  Change the boiling point of water and scald people all over the earth?  All in all, it just wasn't a winner.