Book Review: Scarabus

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Scarabus     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Karen Koehler
Class/Genre:   Fiction   Horror
Black Death Books, July 2002, $18.00, 330 pp.

Christian owns a thriving gallery, has a beautiful visage, and is wealthy beyond most people’s dreams. Yet he is the most miserable being walking the earth. He is a three thousand-year-old demon who has no internal organs except a brain. His body contains uncountable scarabs (beetles), flesh eating bugs that must be feed every night otherwise Scarabus, as he calls himself, knows the pain of the damned.

Scarabus was not always like this. Once he was a man who lived and loved in Middle Egypt. The Scarabus cult performed a magical ritual on him, hoping to create a demon they could bind to their will so they can use him to rule upper and lower Egypt. Their plan failed and Scarabus killed all his creators including his own father and father-in-law. Now he walks the earth searching for a way to end his existence and halt the use of his body as a vessel of the scarabae who want to bring him under their control.

Scarabus the demon is a monster who killed over two million people in his lifetime but yet readers will not feel contempt towards him as if he was Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot. They will pity him for he did not choose his existence, but was betrayed into it by the very people that he thought loved him. His perspective of humanity throughout the ages is fascinating and readers will understand his desire to end his unholy existence. Karen Koehler has written an enthralling, cutting edge novel that will please fans of horror novels.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner