Shield Captain Bennet is on Telnos, a unpleasant little planet inhabited by religious fanatics and unregistered miners running illegal solactinium mines. It’s about to be about to be overrun by the Maess. Bennet’s job is to get out as many civilians as he can, but the enemy arrives before the evacuation is complete. Caught in a vicious fire fight, Bennet is left behind, presumed dead.His family … dead.
His family is grieving. Joss, his long-term partner, grieves with them; lost, unhappy, remorseful. First Lieutenant Flynn has no official ‘rights’ here. He isn’t family. He isn’t partner or lover.
All he is, is broken.
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Unlike its predecessor, Heart Scarab is more of a touchy-feely installment. There’s much less technical-ese to it and more of emotion as author Anna Butler kills off Bennet. Wait, what? you say. You can’t kill of the hero of the story. Don’t worry, he’s not dead. Just left behind and presumed dead. And that presumption is the driving force behind this book.
Bennet and his Shield crew find themselves on a Telnos, a miserable planet inhabited be religious fanatics and unregistered miners, and it’s about to be overrun by the Maess. The Shield’s goal to get as many people out as possible before it’s too late. Then it ends up being too late as the Maess arrive before the evacuation is complete with everyone running for their lives. Bennet turns back to help the last remaining troopers and the last Rosie sees of him is a silhouette as he is thrown back after an explosion.
So begins the fallout of Bennet’s death. How his family, friends and loved ones process it all in. Quite a bit of this grieving follows along with Joss. Guilt, pain, loss. Yeah, I think when it came to Joss I may have felt a smidge of sympathy for him. Then again, maybe not. Really it was Bennet my sympathies laid with. Yes, both were less than perfect and we got to experience their relationship bloom from the beginning via flashbacks. Was it an older man luring in a younger one to recapture his youth? Was it a young man testing out his gay wings? Flattery and seduction on both sides but in the end both were probably at fault of their relationship demise. It was obvious which one of them was having their cake and eating it, too, which is why I never warmed up to Joss.
And then Bennet turns out to not be dead! WooHoo! The hows whats whys my lips are sealed but about that spectacular rescue, let’s just say it’s good to be a Commander’s son. Bennet survival has two sides to it. Pre-rescue, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Not so sci-fi ish now, instead it’s about the people left behind and how they survived. Ifan, Luke, Janerse and the others, gotta love the characters the author comes up with but why or why can’t the rescue not come without tears! Post-rescue did no favors to Joss. Having moved from partners to martyr and patient did not put either in a flattering light but it finally had Bennet coming to the decision he knew for a long time he would have to be made.
I signed up to read this series because I wanted a sci-fi series to lose myself in. That was not what Heart Scarab turned out to be. However, if we wanted to really get to know Bennet, then the series of events that take place within these pages become a necessary evil. It’s all leading somewhere with or without a HFN or HEA although my mind is still refusing to accept where the author is leading us. And I’m not even going to grumble on how the book ended because surely it will make sense in the long run. Right?