While this novel has a good setup, it never really seemed to go anywhere. I know the author was trying to convey a sense of terror and being cooped up in a spaceship with horrible possessed humans, it was very well done. The relationships and bonds that the main character had with the others on the ship didn't feel earned at the end.

This review was originally posted on <a href="https://booksofmyheart.net/2019/10/17/audio-salvaged-by-madeleine-roux/" target="_blank"> Books of My Heart</a>
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Review copy was received from NetGalley, Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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I like science fiction and <strong>Salvaged</strong> seemed like it might have the first phase of an apocalyptic change.  What I didn't consider in advance was the world-building and character aspects.  The world is one with space travel, and other advanced technologies such as bioengineering.  It is also a world with politics and greed with some bad people misusing their power.  Rosalyn gets crushed by this with a famous, wealthy family and some of the others in the business.

So Rosalyn runs. No one took her side, or seemed to care about her, so she left. She takes a crappy job, and tries to ignore / forget the past. When even the crappy job is on the line, she pulls herself together and ends up in a terrifying situation.  Her character development and careful skills, along with her compassion are the power of<strong> Salvaged.</strong>

I wasn't ever really terrified but there was definitely a suspense about who would survive, and how it would happen. In this situation, there  are instances where no decision is a good one. Things have to be done to live and protect the world. Sometimes the choice is to only protect others.  The story is quite contained with a small number of characters.  I found myself in my mind more than lost in emotions. The ending gives us some of the aftermath which I appreciate.

<h4>Narration:</h4>
I'm a fan of Emily Woo Zeller and enjoyed her performance here. I was comfortable with all her voices, male and female, which allowed me to just focus on the story itself.  I listened at my normal 1.5x speed.

Happy book birthday to "Salvaged"!

PEOPLE. I had such fun with this book! I'll keep my review short and sweet so as to avoid spoilers (because, whew, there are some doozies), but suffice it to say this book ticks a lot of my boxes. I enjoyed spending time with all (well, all but *one*) of the characters (and that *one* is meant to be a sleaze bucket, so). I love the premise (trapped on a ship with my favorite scifi horror *thing*). I love Roux's deft handling of the science, which is just believable enough to feel lived-in but not so exacting that it requires unwieldy infodumps or slows down the pace of the action. I love that someone is using melaleuca oil and tea tree oil in space. And I like the diversity of the characters (it's not often you get to see a badass old lesbian lady scientist, my friends, and the other characters are equally as good). I love that all the best recent science fiction horror books circle back to family drama ("Salvation Day" and "The Luminous Dead," I'm looking at you). If you enjoyed either Caitlin Starling or Kali Wallace's recent books, you're pretty darn sure to like this one too, and that's not to say any of these three books is too like the others. I just love that I live in a day and age when we get a whole constellation of uniquely weird and queer science fiction horror novels.

I've found my people, people. And that's a good feeling indeed.

Okay I have no idea how to review this book appropriately, because it's super entertaining but also full of action and I want to spoil absolutely nothing. So I'll do my best, yeah? Great.

Rosalyn, when we meet her, is kind of a mess. She's got an alcohol addiction, nearly getting herself fired from her job as a space janitor, cleaning up actual corpses from missions gone wrong. She likes the job because she was able to basically run away from her problems, so she's not keen on losing it. She agrees to take on a job on the Brigantine, which ends up being far less janitorial in nature than she expected.

Because the Brigantine crew happens to be alive. Well, mostly, anyway. They seem to be infected by some mysterious cause, and now Rosalyn is trapped with them, no way of communicating her need to escape without infecting the whole universe. The stakes, quite literally, couldn't be higher.

It reminds me a little of The Expanse at times, which is a very good thing indeed. Rosalyn is smart, funny, and struggling to remain alcohol-free even in this direst of situations. While I would have liked for the book to have addressed it a bit more, I did like that the author didn't just abandon this addiction the second the shit hit the fan.

The characters were all really well developed, even as this parasite attempts to take over. I was quite impressed at how the author managed to make me care so deeply for characters who weren't even themselves half the time, but she did! I think that was the key, too. As dark and exciting as the story is, it goes from good to great because of how invested I was in its outcome.

Bottom Line: Exciting, thrilling, and full of characters whose fates impacted me greatly, Salvaged was unputdownable.

*I received an advanced copy from Netgalley*

Rosalyn is a functioning alcoholic whose past trauma has led her to a life of cleaning up spaceships whose crews have met unfortunate fates. Her company’s HR rep has caught her drinking on the job and sends her out on a mission as a final chance to prove herself capable. The crew from this new job have been listed as dead from a due to unknown causes. When Rosalyn arrives on the ship, she realizes she is not alone and that death may not be the worst thing that could happen to a person.

As a sci-fi fan, I was intrigued by the premise of this book and I could not put it down. Roux slowly teases the reader with glimpses of Rosalyn's traumatic past and how that past has led her to her current circumstances. The suspense and tension tantalizes the reader to keep reading. Although the end is a bit of a letdown, there is a huge shocking, twist at the end reader will not see coming. I hope to see more of Rosalyn's story in future books.

An enjoyable enough read although honestly not really enough action to keep my attention entirely. I was hoping for something like The Thing meets Alien, and while that is certainly a part of the story it does seem to focus more on Rosalyn's personal issues like alcoholism, family drama, and other trauma she is currently trying to get over / run away from. I'm sure this will be a great book for people who are looking for that kind of thing, but I think I would have probably liked it a bit more if it was more novella length and had a few more horror elements thrown in. Still, it was an overall interesting book and there were a lot of moments I liked. It picked up more in the last few chapters but it definitely lost me a few times in the middle.

This is the kind of sci-fi I love. Smart, nuanced, and an alien parasite of unknown origins messing with the main character's shit. Rosalyn is a survivor, and taking this journey with her was not only empowering but also humbling. I found it very easy to identify with her, in part to the well-written mental health rep, and because she isn't some cocky hero. This is her last chance to change her life, and damn it if she doesn't try. I dug jumping into the minds of the crew members affected by Foxfire, a really cool way to show what the parasite is. And the exciting ending had me turning pages and wishing there were more. Loved it!

This science fiction read reminded me of an episode of Star Trek. It was a really slow burn which I didn't get into until the second half of the story. It took me a while to connect with the main characters. I enjoyed the story and how Foxfire took over. There was a twist that I didn't see coming. The ending was what I had hoped would happen. I will definitely read more books by this author!

An out of control parasite vs. a janitor

It is the year 2269 and the people of Earth have conquered space travel.

Bioengineer Rosalyn Devar leaves her rich father's company after being attacked and not believed and ends up as a crew and ship salvaging job - basically a space janitor.

She get back from cleaning up the remains of two ship's crews and is sent out right away to a third ship that has broadcast that all the crew are dead.

Things go wrong from the beginning and Rosalyn soon finds herself battling more than she ever expected.

The first part of this story was really slow to me, almost to the point I did not finish it (which happens very rarely for me). The action did pick up about the halfway point but I'm still not entirely sure I'm glad I finished the book.

I wanted more in-depth character development of the main characters in the book. I wish there hadn't been half a book of dull reading.

There were some good sections, which is why I gave the three star rating. So make your own decision.

I received this book from Berkley Publishing through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

"A WOMAN ON THE RUN. A CAPTAIN ADRIFT IN SPACE. ONE OF THEM IS INFECTED WITH AN ALIEN PARASITE.

In this dark science fiction thriller, a young woman must confront her past so the human race will have a future.

Rosalyn Devar is on the run from her famous family, the bioengineering job she's come to hate, and her messed-up life. She's run all the way to outer space, where she's taken a position as a "space janitor," cleaning up ill-fated research expeditions. But no matter how far she goes, Rosalyn can't escape herself. After too many mistakes on the job, she's given one last chance: take care of salvaging the Brigantine, a research vessel that has gone dark, with all crew aboard thought dead.

But the Brigantine's crew are very much alive - if not entirely human. Now Rosalyn is trapped on board, alone with a crew infected by a mysterious parasitic alien. The captain, Edison Aries, seems to still maintain some control over himself and the crew, but he won't be able to keep fighting much longer. Rosalyn and Edison must find a way to stop the parasite's onslaught...or it may take over the entire human race."

I like the Alien of it all...

This is the story of Rosalyn Devar, who is a former bioengineer who is currently working salvage jobs in an attempt to flee her former life. She cleans out spaceships who have gone code-blue, with all crew aboard reported dead. She makes some mistakes at work, leading up to her near-termination, and is given one last chance to redeem herself if she crews up with a pilot she’s not a fan of, and goes out to salvage the Brigantine, the third code-blue in any many months (very suspicious).

When she makes it out to the Brigantine, she finds that the crew is very much alive. Alive, and walking and talking, but not human anymore, at least, not entirely. They are infected by a parasitic alien who has taken over most of the crew, and it’s up to Rosalyn and the captain of the Brigantine to save the day, and probably humanity, from the parasites.

The idea of an alien parasitic being taking control of a human and yet letting them keep enough control of themselves that they still remember who they are is interesting to me. So, we see some of this story from the POV of not only Rosalyn, but also from the POV of a couple of the crew members who are very, very infected. One has a catastrophic head wound, and yet is still technically alive, remembers his name and the names of his crew and so on and so forth, and is attempting to create a vaccine for the infected, while also being nearly completely under the thrall of this alien being that he refers to as ‘Mother’.

I liked Rosalyn as a character. She’s got a past that comes to light slowly over the course of the story. She’s not infallible, and does make mistakes, but she’s also sort of snarky and crass and is the type of character that I find cheering for easy. The relationships that form between her and Edison, the captain, and Misato, the engineer were interesting in that there was always a patina of ‘can you really trust them?’ over top of everything. Still, this book often gave me a good case of the feels, with all the strife happening. I got teary-eyed at times, which isn’t really the reaction I was expecting from the sci-fi thriller, but there it is.

But this one does get rather harrowing at times, in a thrilling way, and I oftentimes would be rather legitimately afraid for Rosalyn or her friends. I wasn’t constantly guessing at the plot, but rather letting it happen, and it was full of twists and turns and I was surprised more than once by revelations that came to light as the story progressed.

So, all told, I really enjoyed this one. Much more than I even thought that I would. I would find myself having a very difficult time putting it down to do other things like work, and really that’s one of the best compliments I can give a book.

Thanks to the author, as well as Ace via NetGalley for the review copy!

This is exactly what I wanted from a sci-fi. Deep space, deadly fungus, crazy or crazed I should say characters, isolation, a bit of gore, and a lot of deep psychological thoughts.

This wasn't a really an adventure through space, more of psychological torture in a ship. A salvager, Rosalyn is sent on her last chance trip to a ship that supposedly dead. She's told to look for secrets, and try and figure out what happened, or why. What she finds is not a really dead ship, but a fungus that's overtaken the crew of the ship.

Lots of deadly fungus, lots of personal thoughts, lots of interesting characters, but too much of scientific things that weren't really explained. Especially for the beginning of the book. At first I was bored, but not because of the lack of action, but because of being overwhelmed and not really understanding of what's happening. It got easier to read when we stepped away from all the creative, scientific, really out there things and got down to the gritty psychological story.

I wanted more of the world outside, more of the Rosalyn's story (I really thought this would be a character study for her). The book left a bit open ended, so maybe there's a sequel in the works and that will be explained in the next book.

Would definitely recommend for the sci-fi lovers.

The first 30% hooked me hard. We start out with someone vacuuming up liquified human remains like it's just another day's work? Plus we get some interesting hints to deeper secrets and a dark past? Yes please. The first act had solid pacing and Rosalyn was a character that intrigued me (reminded me a lot of Ren from Planetfall: brilliant but also terribly alone and broken). Also, yay for diversity! Our main trio consists of a half-Indian woman, an elderly Asian woman, and a middle-aged black man. Yes!

I don't feel like we got enough background though. We find out early on that the ship made unscheduled stops and pickups but we don't get any explanation for that. Also, by expanding the narrative beyond Rosalyn, we lose a lot of the weight of the story, making the plot lose precious momentum as we scramble to get to know new characters in snatched chapters. Also, the ending was telegraphed way too early and clearly. I knew how things were going to go pretty soon after the conflict kicked in. I also wasn't into the rather forced romance aspect (though props for badass female friendships).

Overall, the plot is interesting and good for fans of Planetfall and Semiosis. There's quite a bit of action and we have an interesting cast of characters. Though it lost some momentum in the middle, it did pick up by the end and concluded on a strong note.

Salvaged by Madeleine Roux is a science fiction adventure that takes you to outer space.

Rosalyn Devar is a woman of many talents. Daughter of a famous business-owner, Rosalyn is a bioengineer who’s on the run from her current life. She takes up a job as a salvager, which is essentially a janitor for dead bodies in space. It’s mindless work but it allows her freedom from her life on earth.

Dead bodies here. Dead bodies there. Everything is normal and run of the mill until it’s not. Rosalyn’s life changes forever when one job is a little more than she can handle. She boards a ship affected with an alien parasite, and that parasite desperately wants Rosalyn on its side.

Taken hostage, Rosalyn is now adrift on a hostile ship. But all is not lost. Edison, the captain of the infected ship, is fighting the parasite. The two form a connection as they try to figure out how to save Rosalyn’s life. Will they save her life–and the human race–before time runs out?

I enjoyed reading Salvaged by Madeleine Roux. While it wasn’t a book that blew me away, it was certainly entertaining.

I thought Rosalyn’s time on the infected ship was awesomely tense and terrifying. Rosalyn was fierce despite her terrible odds, and it was fun watching her puzzle through a plan with the already infected captain.

Edison stressed me out! While he was doing everything in his power to fight the parasite, it still wanted to control him. It was a nail-biting experience reading about his struggle to control the demon from within.

While the story itself was interesting, I wish the book would have covered more of Rosalyn’s backstory, especially her father and his company. It was touched upon briefly–towards the end of the book–but I felt like much of it was missing. I felt like the absence of this additional backstory was a hole in the book. I wanted–no, needed–to know more.

The ending was good. I wasn’t entirely sure how it was going to end, but I’m glad everything seemed to work out for the characters I cared about.

If you enjoy books about alien invaders and strong female characters, check out Salvaged by Madeleine Roux!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing the Kindle version of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Salvaged by Madeleine Roux was as haunting as it was masterful.

I couldn’t put this book down. The writing and dark, nuanced character work was so interesting, so compelling, that I sped through the first half of this book without looking up. I felt like I was there with those characters, that’s how real the world that Roux has created feels in Salvaged. I was moved, riveted, haunted, and more than anything just plain impressed by this book.

Whole-heartedly enjoyed. I hope you do too.

4.5 Stars

In this science fiction space thriller, Rosalyn Devar is on the run from her life as a brilliant bioengineer whose family runs a major corporation. She left Earth taking a job as a lowly outer space janitor who has the worst job imaginable. Those with a weak stomach might trip lightly through the first few pages. Rosalyn has buried a trauma not only in distance but alcohol so even this bottom of the heap job is at risk. She has one more chance with a last ditch assignment to retrieve what is left of a crew whose ship has gone dark. The majority of the Brigantine’s team turns out to be very much alive in a different way. An alien host has taken the crew over and Rosalyn becomes stranded with the group of four. With the help of the Captain Edison Aries, she is in a desperate fight to stop the spread of this new species before it can infect and overtake everyone.

Edison fights hard but sometimes “Mother” wins out as she has done on others of the crew. The parasitic alien uses emotions, memories both good and bad, and physical pain to control, coax, and command its hosts. As Rosalyn slowly unwinds the details of what happened and when, it seems that her current and former bosses may have something to do with this catastrophic situation adding to her own personal level of despair.

This story is told from several POV’s making it less cohesive for me with lots of flashbacks for the group giving deep background on their lives, loves, and propensities. The book is quite intense with several heart-stopping encounters for Roslyn and Edison while they try desperately to gain some ground against their common enemy. Someone on the ship has betrayed them and set things in motion so the team members have to fight each other as well as the alien entity. The story is at times fast-paced, penetrating, often times brutal, and quite dark with some glimmers of light and hope in small measures. The ending could have used more expansion after all the gripping twists, turns, and fraught situations.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher I was able to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
***
Salvaged by Madeleine Roux is quite the sci-fi thriller. The story has horror elements but it felt more like a giant thriller than horror, although I certainly felt horror a couple times though out the book. I personally loved the story, there wasn’t anything super new as far as the story went but I greatly enjoyed the writing, and the characters were intriguing and kept me going wanting good things for them (even while expecting bad things). The story moves fairly slow for awhile, especially until you reach the Brigantine where multiple things happen at once, and then the story slows down again for a bit until a certain series of events, and then it’s almost nonstop until the end. Rosalyn is a fascinating character person to follow although you do get multiple other points of view throughout the story as well which does a fantastic job of stressing how awful the parasite is.
Rosalyn is a troubled soul, recently left broken and haunted by something that was pretty easy to guess at but isn’t spoken of for awhile, she doesn’t trust easily and has fallen into the bottle to cushion the blow she felt due to a betrayal that ties into why she’s a space janitor now. She’s smart and quick and a survivor. Edison the captain feels a deep sense of guilt this happened under his eye and will do what he can to try and find justice for his crew, he’s an intelligent, contemplative kind of man.
***

Rosalyn is the equivalent of a space janitor, being sent out to ships to clean up after messes (deaths) and following her return from her most recent (and really disturbing) gig she finds she’s in trouble. She has a drinking problem, a recently acquired problem as she runs from her recent past, and it’s put her in a tight spot.
To prove she has what it takes Rosalyn is given another mission soon after her return. This is her last shot and she can’t mess it up but she feels this mission is even more than a chance for her, it feels much bigger and possibly more overwhelming. Especially when her pilot for the new mission is kept grounded as she needs to recover from what she saw in her last mission, something very similar to what Rosalyn saw. What is going on out there?
When Rosalyn arrives at the Brigantine she finds what was supposed to be a completely dead crew mostly alive, if not entirely human. Faced against overwhelming odds and companions she can’t entirely rely on due to their parasitic infection Rosalyn is in a race against time to either work with or fight against the crew to save the rest of mankind. The parasite doesn’t have good intentions and Rosalyn will have to work quick and fast because she’s being surrounded by conspiracies and deaths and needs to find a safe way out. If that’s possible.

I appear to be in the minority here, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one! It seems that this book is more mature and darker thematically than most early readers expected, but that was definitely a plus for me. My only concern is my questions surrounding the ending, and whether or not this will be extended into a series, or if it's just intending to be ambiguous and mysterious? Either way, I highly recommend this one to fans of horror sci-fi!

Salvaged by Madeleine Roux is mostly-good-but-basically-forgettable until you get to the last 80 pages or so. You get there, a switch flips, and it proceeds to knock your socks off. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I showed up for the space parasites but I stayed for the relationship between Rosalyn and Edison. Roux owned that ending. OWNED it.

I can barely remember the rest of the book, but that ending was pure cinematic magic directed straight from her words to my brain. I didn’t read it, I saw it. It takes damned fine writing to do that. Also, she gave me the warm’n’fuzzies and I liked it. Not so much that I wasn’t rooting for at least one of them to die horribly in the end, but still! (Face it, sometimes a tragic ending is the best one.)

Note: the previous statement is not a spoiler. I just told you I was rooting for a tragic ending, not whether it happened or not.

As for what else I liked: Well, it contains some fungi-based fun, it’s got a diverse set of characters, and there were no obvious mistakes in it that made me go “Nah, this don’t work” like there was with the Hazmat suit and the gun in the book which shall not be named.

It’s a good story, it’s got a Giles-y character to crush on, a girl with some trigger-y past issues weighing her down and … Okay, look, here’s the thing: I have a serious problem with addiction, specifically alcohol addiction. If someone is an alcoholic, I go straight up to basically “I hate you. You’re disgusting. Remove yourself from my page and/or screen immediately.” If I was in a book, my backstory would include the father who was drunk all the time and was a worthless walking bag of feces. So, yeah, I have issues with alcoholism. So when you give me a main character who is struggling with it, ooh boy. I almost quit on the book right away. But I didn’t, and I’m glad.

Rosalyn is an alcoholic, yes, but she’s one that I was able to feel sorry for rather than just hate. That made a difference. People deal with past trauma in all sorts of ways. This is how she dealt with hers, and it’s really hard to hold it against her. Roux did good here.

Overall, Salvaged is a solid read. Roux wasn’t an author I had much interest in picking up again after reading the first book in the Asylum series, but I am glad I gave her another shot. Salvaged isn’t a blow-you-out-of-the-water book, but it is a good one and well worth reading. (Did I mention I freaking loved that ending??)

I found much to like about Salvaged, by Madeleine Roux, perhaps none more than the intriguing and complex protagonist Rosalyn, but I also found a few issues along the way. Ultimately my interest in seeing how it all turned out outweighed any of my minor quibbles.

This review is based on an advance copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley for that purpose. The book will be available on October 15, 2019.

Salvaged features a truly memorable opening, with Rosalyn performing her duties as a “space janitor.” This particular job involves cleaning up the gruesome aftermath of what’s described as the mass murder of a crew committed by the ship’s captain. Not for nothing but space is dangerous and it seems taking care of dead co-workers is a lot of Rosalyn’s job; but that alone isn’t why she hits the flask hidden in her spacesuit. Rosalyn’s got issues, the least of which is being wildly over-qualified to be a space janitor.

But it’s the drinking that lands her on a salvage ship heading out to a full “code blue” — death of the entire crew — on a research ship. She and her co-worker find code blue means something very different on that ship (an inside joke you’ll get when you see it): not all of the crew is dead, and those alive aren’t exactly themselves.

At this point the story slows down somewhat, taking a direction I didn’t expect while also shifting the perspective between a few characters. I appreciated having a fuller view of what was happening, but frankly missed Rosalyn whenever she wasn’t the lead. The ending isn’t a cliffhanger, but I do have some unanswered questions. Perhaps there’s a sequel in the works; I wouldn’t mind spending some more time following Rosalyn’s journey.

My review scale:
3 Stars: A good read, worth a reader’s time in my opinion.