Lon E. Varnadore https://www.lonevarnadore.com is the author of five novels. Junker Blues: Mars was published in 2020 and is the first in his Junker Blues series. It is the 43rd book I completed reading in 2023.

Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own! Due to scenes of mild violence, I categorize this novel as PG. The primary character is Marcus Redding, captain of the Junker.

He calls himself a Junkologist, but in reality, he is nothing more than a scavenger. He and his female alien co-pilot Lash search for what they can salvage. It is dangerous work since they never know when they might come upon a ship infected with the Crawl. The Crawl leaves humans in a zombie-like state with the only desire to infect others.

On this trip, the Junker comes across the derelict Shelby, a pre-Crawl ship. Pre-Crawl ships are a wealth of salvage treasure. Built before Earth fell to the Crawl.

As Redding searches the Shelby, he encounters the remains of its crew. He also finds a probe that he thinks might be valuable. Surprisingly, the dormant Crawl-infected crew awakens and goes after him.

Redding avoids the Crawl drones on the Shelby and makes it back to the Junker. You would think that was enough of an adventure, but it is only the beginning. He must avoid aliens that are tracking him by implanted tech. And after crashing on Mars, Redding and Lash must avoid the Martian Defense Force.

I enjoyed the 4.5+ hours I spent reading this 190-page young adult science fiction novel. The novel is short and abrupt ends, but it is still enjoyable. The plot has some twists and turns to keep the reader’s interest. Some things should have had more of an explanation. The chosen cover art represents the story. I give this novel a rating of 3.8 (rounded to 4) out of 5.

You can access more of my book reviews on my Blog ( https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/).

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I received a copy of the book from Netgalley to review. Thank you for the opportunity.
This book promised much but failed to deliver. The story lacked focus and structure. The characters are quite bland and don't give to engagement easily.
An OK read.

This was a NetGally discovery and I loved the sound of the blurb. I was super excited to read it and it's only 190 pages so I smashed it out in one sitting. And look, I'm not sure how to review this one. The premise was wicked, it starts out strong and I enjoyed the first little bit and then I'm not sure what happened but it kind of turned into an inconsistent dumpster fire.

There was zero character development, the twists and turns were bland and wow as I write this I realise that I don't really have anything positive to say. The world building and history had so much potential but nothing was fleshed out. Things are briefly alluded to, but it's mainly just keywords thrown around.

I guess it's one of those things where as you continue to read the books, you would get more backstory and character development, but you have to want to keep reading. You can't just ignore it and hope people will keep reading when you haven't actually given them anything to look forward to. I think you have to make a person care about some part of your book, for me it's the characters, so they want to find out what happens to them next.

Also I just don't think the book was ready for readers yet. It was messy and inconsistent. It could have been so much more.

Sci-Fi is not really my typical genre, but this series looked interesting. I thought the read was fun and kept me interested until the end. I'll be looking for more titles from this author.