I love a good sci-fi about a rag-tag crew so when I saw this audio book with Nathan Fillion narrating I knew I had to give it a try. There were some definite highs and lows to this book but overall I thought it was a fun and enjoyable read, if not exactly my favourite.

The good: the premise of this is a pretty stock sci-fi plot but it still felt fresh and interesting. I was curious to see where the author would take the story and enjoyed some of the twists and turns. I was really enjoying the characters at the beginning of the book and wanted to learn more about them. I would say the first third or so of the book is the strongest aspect and the part I enjoyed reading the most.

the less good: Once we got into the second (and then third) story arc I did find myself losing interest. It didn't seem as connected to the first part of the book and I struggled with the shift in plot and tone - it just didn't really feel like I was reading the same book anymore and a lot of what I liked at the beginning was gone. The plot doesn't kind of just stagnates for a while and then things end up feeling really rushed at the end. This is a surprisingly short book and I think it probably would have been better served by a higher page count so the author had time to fully develop some of their ideas.

Nathan FIllion as the narrator for the audiobook was great but sometimes it was hard to separate what I was reading from other characters he has played.

Overall, this would probably be a 2.5 because I really did enjoy the beginning I just wish it had stayed strong through the rest of the story

This novel was told from OC’s POV. OC was a human overseer who had his consciousness removed from his human body and put into a machine. This machine brain could be transferred into smaller robotic parts, such as a camera or a drone. OC was the overseer of a human salvage crew. OC, along with three disposable humans (Simon, Anna and Milo), were sent to Urmanhon Beta to find a ship that crashed there centuries ago. Things went wrong quickly as numerous challenges were thrown at them; from hostiles to broken machinery and a virus.

I really enjoyed this novel. The combination of amazing plot and great voice actor really nailed this novel for me. I won’t lie, I initially picked this novel up due to it being voiced by Nathan Fillion. However, a good voice actor can’t carry a novel by itself and the plot kept me interested.

The action and suspense was incredible, I really had no idea what was going to happen. The ending completely surprised me, I really never expected that.

The characters were good overall. The main character, OC, was stellar. For a human slowly losing his humanity (apparently that was a natural consequence of a human consciousness being put into a robot) he had great character. He was kind, smart and a little sarcastic with just the hint of humour. I loved his poetry, initially I just wrote off this as a quirk without realizing it would have such a big impact later in the novel. Simon, Anna and Milo were good secondary characters but not a lot of time was dedicated to them. As such it was hard to get to truly understood their motives and emotions.

Overall this was a great science fiction novel that didn’t fit into one true mould. It had a touch of hard sci-fi (from its description of the camp and equipment set-ups) to space opera (from its space battles) to survival sci-fi. I would recommend this novel to all sci-fi fans out there, especially the audio version as it’s one of the best I’ve heard this year (and I’ve listened to approximately 50 this year so far).

A poetry-writing AI operating a salvage ship with a contracted crew to labor arrives on a planet on a simple job to salvage a old ship and then head out to the next job with a new crew. However, when they arrive instead of finding an uninhabited planet, they have to contend with defending their lives as well as completing their salvage and contract.

I think that the audiobook really made it hard for me to enjoy. As much as I enjoy Nathan Fillion's acting, he is not a skilled narrator. The pacing and tone made it incredibly hard to listen, absorb, and enjoy. Beyond that, I found it hard to connect to the characters outside of the AI. They didn't seem super fleshed out, which made it hard to care about the challenges that they were facing. I did actually like the few chapters that focused on their point of view and would have liked to more of that.

The AI and the plot were interesting and I probably would have enjoyed this book a lot more if I read a print version, even if the plot is not super surprising. The poetry aspect probably translated better in print, but was easily ignored/dismissed in audio. I did like the hints of world around the crew and the humanity of the AI and would've liked to see more of that. Ultimately, this audiobook ended up not working for me. People who enjoy AI centered stories and missions with first contact gone wrong may enjoy this!

This went to an unusual, interesting conclusion. My Rating 4.25

The AI Overseer began work with PCS, Planetary Crusade Services, as a human, becoming a super-soldier and then ultimately agreeing to become a ‘digitized’ human… or an AI. Now “OC” (as dubbed by the crew), has been promoted as an AI Overseer who is to lead a mission to salvage an ancient UN starship on a distant planet. The AI was promised an “A” team crew but ended up with three humans who seem to be barely capable.

Simon, the geologist, turns out to be good with weapons, although a bit gun-happy. Anna is apparently Fake Anna and maybe an Army doctor. Milo is the inventor who is supposed to be able to shoot - but it turns out - not so much.

The shuttle from the ship misses the landing pad and ends up 50 miles away from the first salvage site. The crew begins to set up their base, but the work is soon interrupted by the discovery of a Megabeast who feeds on multilegged ‘dogs’. These creatures are only part of the problem the crew has to face as they are soon confronted by a crazy, dark, decaying metal humanoid.

The salvage assignment stretches out as the crew runs into one problem after another and even the ship has gone missing. Soon it is just a struggle for survival.

The story is told primarily by the snarky AI, a technique which I enjoy, especially with this fun character. There is plenty of action and, surprisingly, a bit of poetry as AI tends to make up verse and occasionally quote classics such as “Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred”. The ending takes an unexpected twist which changes the nature of the story … but that can be fun in the ironic nature of sci fi. There is a good mix of suspense and humor which makes this an engaging story. I recommend this to sci fi fans who enjoy humor and an unexpected ending.

Audio Notes: I admit that I snagged this because of the narrator, Nathan Fillion, (Firefly, Castle, The Rookie). I think he captured the snarky character of the AI and delivered the other characters well too. I did have a few short times when the voice was almost too soft and I had to go back to relisten. Other than that, I totally enjoyed the audio experience and feel it enhanced the story for me.

Source: 2020 NetGalley.

The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my third novel by this author and I still think he's going strong as hell.

The shape and flavor of Salvage Crew is a pretty familiar one to readers of SF, of course. A crew comes to a hostile alien world, encounters many strange things that kill them, and makes discoveries that change everything.

But as always, HOW a thing is done is often much more important than WHAT is being done.

In this case, we're taking on another example of AI-ship narration, claustrophobic horror (even for the AI), and a slippery slope down a stop-gap defensive position that NONE of them are prepared for.

And the enemy?

Let's just say that there's no way any of us could have prepared against it.

Fortunately, it gives us a very satisfying conclusion that makes me want to read on and on. I'm reminded of We Are Legion (We Are Bob) and To Sleep in a Sea of Stars in a very fond way.

Oh, and as a side benefit, Nathan Fillon narrates the audio version!

** spoiler alert ** I received a copy of this audiobook from NetGalley. As science fiction stories go, this one is both imaginative and derivative. So much of the book feels familiar, but it’s almost a positive because the reader is thematically oriented to the events.

That’s not to say this book isn’t original, it definitely has its own flavour. The mixture of Buddhist philosophy and science fiction really worked. The snarky asides about reincarnation from the OC were an especially delightful addition.

This book is very visual and reads like a film adaptation. But unlike some other books, it doesn’t seem like the author had one eye on a potential jump to the screen. This book is a mega-beast unto itself.

I really liked the character of OC, who is such a fully rounded character with their own flaws. They’re so human but not so as well. Giving a non-human the protagonist role can be tricky but OC was a great introduction to the world and a nice guide through the events.

My trouble was with the rest of OC’s crew. I don’t think they were written as well. There’s a hint that Milo may have an issue with female authority figures, and he and Anna can’t seem to be in the same vicinity without killing each other, but then he dies a hero?

Simon is always sick. And always stupid, but he fights through his pain to keep the crew and the hab together. I just don’t know how to feel about this character. He was foolhardy but he worked till his dying breath. I guess we are supposed to have mixed feelings about him.

I didn’t like how Anna was written. It’s cool that she has an Indian name, but she was more trouble and of little help. OC spent most of their time trying to keep Anna from wrecking things. I understand that Anna was working through past trauma, but why did it have to be linked to a romance and not the tragic handling of people by big organizations like the UN and PCS?

Honestly, despite Anna being the only uninjured person, she did very little to save the hab and protect her crew. I don’t think it helps that she’s the only female character in the book and she’s just emotion-central and an antithesis to the plot.

Anna only comes alive when there’s no hope left and it made me wonder why she couldn’t have been so fiery all throughout.

I like the twist in the end but there was no context to it. No build up to this unexpected revelation. That twist needed a foundation.

I thought Nathan Fillion did a great job with the narration. I do wish he’d modulated his voice a little more to differentiate between the human and non-human characters. There were also the occasional over long pauses which should have been taken out in post, but overall, this was fantastic to listen to.

I think this book is a refreshing new entry to the science fiction genre. It’s a bit gory and a little gross at times, but it is unique as well.

The Salvage Crew was written by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne and narrated by Nathan Fillion. I was hooked at Nathan Fillion! Yes, I am a sci-fi nerd, Firefly fan, and Castle fan. Give me Nathan Fillion any day of the week. I bought this book the minute I found out that Nathan Fillion narrated it. Yes, literally the very minute.

Synopsis:
A small group of human misfits is sent to a backwater planet to salvage a UN crash site. The mission Overseer is a Buddhist who was coerced into a robot body. The story is told from his point of view.

The Salvage Crew spends most of its time exploring AI self-awareness while the human crew implodes and does stupid shit in the background. They confront obstacles with a complete lack of grace, intelligence, or a sense of self-preservation. The humans must face a well-armed UN crew that isn’t supposed to be alive or hostile, ferocious native wildlife, and a big surprise near the end of the book.

Story Review:
I wanted to love this book, but it is missing something. The most glaring problem is the lack of compelling sub-plots – or any substantive sub-plots. The main plot is like a bull charging through to the end of the book, straightforward and predictable.

Herein lies the problem. I feel like the author had one story to tell, then shaped the book around that one-dimensional story. Let’s throw in some tragedy here, some stupidity here, an attack here, and don’t forget to heap on some more hell for the humans to endure. The story needs life, personality, and spontaneity. I feel compelled to add that moronic behavior is not spontaneity. I suspect that the author may have been too much in his own head while crafting The Salvage Crew. This leads me to wonder if he has beta readers or a developmental editor.

The Overseer’s poetry did not inspire me. I didn’t feel like it added to the book. After reading the book, I did some internet digging about the book and Yudhanjaya Wijeratne. I found the interview embedded at the bottom of this blog post, where the author discusses the book with two fans. They mention the poetry, how much they liked it, and the hidden references therein. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the references, but I did enjoy watching them geek-out over the poetry.

Narration Review:
Nathan Fillion brings his much-needed charm to a rather predictable book. He does an amazing job and I would definitely listen to his narration again.

And yet, I wanted more. Maybe it is because I love his film and TV work so much that I missed his physicality; maybe there wasn’t enough humor in the book to capitalize on his quirkiness. I suspect that sci-fi fans who are not familiar with Nathan Fillion will enjoy The Salvage Crew more than his ride-or-die fans because they will not bring expectations from Nathan’s past performances with them to this book.

Production Errors:
I only found one production error in this book. Honestly, I didn’t even notice it the first time around. It occurs within the first two minutes of chapter one. I do find it odd that a high-profile production contains an error, any error.

Reading Recommendations:
If you liked The Salvage Crew, you should check out Manifest Destiny. It is an action-packed audiobook about a “supposedly” empty Mars colony. After watching the interview below, I sense that Yudhanjaya Wijeratne believes that his human action sub-plots are on the same level as Manifest Destiny. Sadly, there is no comparison.

Source:
I purchased a copy of this book with an Audible Credit because I go fangirl over Nathan Fillion.

I liked the first halve of the book, exploring the new world and getting to know the characters.
Towards the end it became a bit too slow and technical for me.
I loved the narration by Nathan Fillion.

The Salvage crew is deceptively simple (and seemingly derivative) in it's first hundred pages or so. For a moment, I wondered if I'd accidentally picked up a book set in the HALO universe. There's more to this novel than meets the eye however.

What starts as a simple science fiction survival thriller (stranded on a planet, must be creative to survive, developing an almost sexual bond with a space volleyball, that kind of thing) quickly becomes much more than we see at the surface. We end in a very different way than we started -- and despite how simple a story concept that is, it seems rare and refreshing.

Nathan Fillion is an excellent narrator as well, injecting the internal monologue and external dialogue with his unique flavor of comedic timing. I would love to hear more from him.

Ok, so I mostly requested this book because Nathan Fillion narrated it. And honestly, that was probably the best part. He was a good narrator, but I felt like there was basically no plot to this book. Since there was no plot, it never really grabbed my attention. I found myself zoning out often. There are certain points where I knew what was happening, but if you asked me what the overall point of the book was, I don't know. Basically, this crew went to an uninhabited planet to salvage the wreck of a ship and they got stuck there. They then discover that there are some unfriendly inhabitants that live there.
The characters were ok, there were 3 human characters and 1 AI character (the narrator of the book). They had a very believable relationship for 3 people who are unintentionally stuck together for a long period of time.
Overall, I would recommend this for hardcore sci-fi fans, but it wasn't exactly for me.

Unfortunately I had to DNF this book about 15% in. I'm not sure if the ARC of the audio book is set at a speed other than 1.0 but it seemed like it was sped up to 1.5 or more and it was very distracting. I listen to audiobooks at 1.0 speed.

Also, there were so many times when Nathan Fillion would speak in almost a whisper and I couldn't hear what he was saying at all. At 15% in, I just couldn't get into the story at all.

I requested this audio book because... #1 Nathan Fillian, and #2, sci-fi. But the production killed it for me.

I think I would enjoy this so much more reading the print version. The premise was interesting. The start reminded me of Anne MacCaffrey's brain ships, or Dennis E Tay!or's Bobiverse series. I love those books! And I love audio books. In fact, the Bobiverse series are my favorite audiobooks to date. But I just couldn't stay with this one.

But I do thank you for the advance copy.

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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RED DWARF REMIX?
I'm not suggesting for a second that Wijeratne's mind worked this way (at least I don't mean to), but this is the impression I got as this started.

The Red Dwarf TV Show/Novels had a couple of great ideas at the beginning—an AI that ran the ship, that had a strange personality, an odd sense of humor, and wasn't entirely reliable. The second was that the ship generated a holographic officer based on the memories and personality of one of a dead member of the crew (whoever was highest ranking/most needed among the dead). A long time ago, it had been determined that AI with memories and real emotions actually perform better than those not based on actual humans.

Our main protagonist and narrator in this novel is an AI, made from the memories and personality of an engineer who served his whole professional life in space (after leaving his family's farm). He's now in charge of a small salvage crew for the company Planetary Crusade Service, sent to a tiny planet Urmahon Beta to recover as much as they can from an old colony ship that presumably crashed there.

His role is Overseer, and his crew nicknames him OC. This is OC's first command, if it goes well—and a few others—he can move up to a larger, better body/command. In a few decades or so, he could work is his up to a large ship, overseeing a major operation. Again, that's if everything goes well.

EVERYTHING DOESN'T GO WELL
OC is promised an "A-Team" of a crew for his first command. He doesn't get one. They're not a B-Team either. There are not enough letters to describe how far this trio is from an A-Team. For that matter, I'm not sure OC is A-Team material either—they land far off-course (turbulence during descent, we're told).

Almost instantly, the crew starts falling apart, ignoring orders and protocol. They begin to build a base to work from, but get distracted by things like indigenous flora and fauna, personality conflicts, and evidence that suggests they may not be the only salvage crew on the planet (there's a rival company with bionic operators with aggressive tendencies).

From a rough start, it gets worse, and the next few weeks are a spiral of cascading failure, disease, injuries, strife, crop failure, questionable vodka distillation, bargain-basement tech, and...well, I can't keep going. It gets messy, and what starts off as a quirky, comedic version of The Martian with a side of Red Dwarf turns into something tense, taut, dark, and suspense-filled. It doesn't stay that way, depending on how you want to count things, ends up taking one or two other overall flavors, while never completing shedding the offbeat humor that characterized the book since the opening paragraph.

POETRY AND OTHER QUIRKS
I'm going to focus on OC, rather than the rest of the crew (and they are all worth writing about) to keep this short (and because you really need to get into spoilers to do a proper job of talking about the humans). He is funny. There's a snarky, offbeat humor to his narration and dialogue throughout.

He's also a poet. I'm not saying he's a good one, but he is one. Frequently in Fantasy novels (particularly older ones that wear their Tolkien-influence on their sleeves), you get a lot of poetry/songs/etc., but that's rarely a feature of Science Fiction novels. The Salvage Crew is the exception to this rule. OC writes it, recites it to his crew to encourage them, he quotes and ruminates on other's poetry...he's the most poetic AI I think I've ever encountered in a novel. He's also a Buddhist, and will often apply that to his situation.

He also has the best curses. He's frequently letting off steam by cursing his crew, PCS executives, or local fauna to a horrible future reincarnation. I could have listened to some of those for a solid hour.

FILLION'S NARRATION
It's tough to say for certain, but I think that Fillion raised this about a star in my book (maybe just a half). It's his voice, his charm that hooks you in and gets you to like, believe in and root for OC. That said, at some point, I stopped thinking of this as Fillion, and just let OC tell me a good story.

It's not the best narration I've ever heard, but it's really good and it made me hope that Fillion does more audiobooks.

CO-WRITTEN BY AI?
So, there was apparently actual AI software involved in the writing of this. I learned about this when I started writing this post, and I'm not sure I understood everything I skimmed (I didn't want to take the time to read carefully instead of just posting this). I'm intrigued by this notion, but am relieved to see that the software only "helped" with portions of the book and that Wijeratne was the final word.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT THE SALVAGE CREW?
Roughly the first half of the book* is about what I expected—an amusing SF adventure—and was a lot of fun to listen to. The rest of the book isn't what I expected from the premise in terms of story or tone. And I was riveted. There are portions of the book that get into more philosophical territories, and while I wasn't as interested in them as I think the novel wanted me to be, they were really well constructed and told.

* This is an estimate, I didn't jot down notes about when the tenor of the plot/novel changes)

I'm really glad I took a chance on this book, I'll definitely listen to future audiobooks by Fillion (assuming any are produced) and am probably going to be trying some of Wijeratne's other novels. I heartily recommend it to SF readers/listeners.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from Podium Audio via NetGalley in exchange for this post—thanks to both for this.

I have a thing for snarky AIs, and once I saw this was narrated by Nathan Fillion, of course I requested this audiobook.

“I’m surrounded by idiots.”


Amber Rose – called OC by his crew – is a snarky AI who used to be human. He’s a Buddhist who writes poems in his spare time (absolutely awful poems, by the way) and he’s slowly working his way up the rank of AIs. His latest mission is to oversee the salvage of a UN colony ship that crashed on Urmahon Beta. It’s definitely not a prestigious assignment, and his ragtag crew – Simon, Anna and Milo – are, well, not even the C team. Plus the ship that dropped them off, helpfully called “Ship,” and is supposed to be their backup if anything goes wrong is also not the brightest bulb. When OC asks her to alert him to anything unusual in the planet’s orbit, the Ship helpfully sends him info about the planet’s two moons. At first, OC is resigned to a boring few months of ordering around his idiot crewmates, but things gradually take a turn for the worse. There’s giant megafauna, not a lot of helpful resources near their landing site, and, oh, indications that they may not be alone on the planet.

“But now I know exactly how useful dumb things can be.”


I loved OC as a character – all the wonderful snark I was promised! – and I loved how he gradually came to care for each of his crew members, even the particularly annoying Milo. Each of the characters was distinct and it reflected in their relationships with OC. At the beginning, a large part of the book is spent talking about the various tech that makes their salvage mission possible, from creating their hab modules to growing potatoes, and this reminded me a lot about everything I loved about The Martian. But as the story progresses, through humor, to horror, to thriller, what seems on the surface to be a run-of-the-mill scifi survival story turns into something much deeper.

It’s hard to talk too much about what happens in the later half of the book without going into spoilers, but one of the concepts is that of a “literary machine” – a non-organic entity that’s evolved beyond simplistic if/then commands (looking at you, Ship) and can actually create, like OC’s poetry. It’s a concept that’s been articulated before, of course, but I was captivated by that particular word choice. And like OC’s poetry, the book is general is heavily influenced by Buddhism because of OC’s human upbringing, from the style of poetry to how he reacts to the world around him to his highly humorous curses. Most of my knowledge of Buddhism comes from a pan-Asian art class back in college and I think I would’ve appreciated some aspects of the book more if I’d been more familiar.

“May your most precious assets spontaneously turn into goats. May those goats be reborn as lettuce.”


Nathan Fillion is perfect as as the narrator as OC dovetails nicely with the usual sarcastic types he usually plays. The book is mostly told from OC’s POV, and I think the only places the narration didn’t work as well for me were when it briefly switched to other characters. While some of them felt well defined (Anna and Milo), Simon and some spoilery others didn’t. Besides that, I thought the narration was excellent, especially when dealing with some of OC’s prolonged monologues and the action segments.

Overall, this was a thought-provoking read, and one that I’m still thinking about. I will definitely be looking up more of the author’s work!

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

There is no way you can go wrong with Nathan Fillion as a narrator. Even if your book is terrible (which this is not at all), Nathan Fillion would save it. This book was an interesting, funny, and enjoyable story even on its own, and Fillion only added to that. I had a great time following along with the adventures of this ragtag crew and their quirky, once-human Overseer. I loved that the Overseer was once human. It made him all the more interesting, and provided a fascinating contrast between human and machine and what it means to be both. I thought the rest of the crew was intriguing. They begin as a much smaller part of the story, with the Overseer taking center stage. However, as the story progresses and you learn more about them, they become deeper and more complex. This book could very easily become a caricature of what it was, but I thought Yudhanjaya Wijerantne avoided those pitfalls beautifully. I definitely think this story would lose something without Fillion's fantastic voice, but I do think this was a worthwhile story in its own right and I will be interested to see more from this author in the future.

This was an interesting alien planet survival romp, with a surprise twist.

Narrated by Nathan Fillion (who, no surprise, did an excellent job) it has the kind of wry, occasionally zany humor and violence that that might lead you to expect.

Will appeal to fans of The Expanse and Murderbot Diaries.

Imagine having enough courage to take a trip into space. Then imagine even more courage, that takes you not only into space but to a far off planet where you will deal with the unknown with very few others. This situation is the set up for The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne. The Salvage Crew is the story of four personalities and their adventure of taking a job in space on a planet that is reported as uninhabited by any living, dangerous entities. The workers include three humans with different skills and also one being of mixed human and artificial intelligence as their leader. These voices have in mind a straightforward job that will make them well off, and what happens instead is nothing they would have attempted. With a lot of set up in the first portion of the book, we get the science and background that sci fi lovers look for in their genre. However once the adventure starts, panic sets in and there is anxiety for what will happen next in this unknown world. In addition, the job they are doing is somewhat repetitive, leading to a very slow and depressing portion of the novel. Toward the end of the story, things begin to look up for some of our crew. However at that point this reader was exhausted. The best part of the experience is audiobook being voiced by Nathan Fillion, who expertly acts out all the voices and makes it quite easy to determine who is speaking at any time. He passes on the desperation and irritation felt by the crew, also the empathy and company rules their leader uses to calm them. Fillion is a joy to hear, and I will search out other audiobooks narrated by him. The Salvage Crew was a good concept, but could have been made much shorter to avoid boredom in the middle portion. This reader just doesn’t enjoy slower books with a sad overall feeling.

A misfit band of under-qualified space rednecks embark on a routine salvage mission to recover a lost ship that had set off to colonize Urmahon Beta but had failed. The story is told by a sarcastic formerly human AI ship mind voiced by Nathan Fillion in the audiobook version. Things begin to go wrong almost from the start as the planet turns out to be far different than expected.

With some serious Firefly notes and Fillion behind the microphone, I was assuming this would be a really fun space romp. And for the first half of the book, it really is! Fillion makes for a fascinating narrator, because his pacing and inflection just sound very different than your average audiobook narrator.

As the action begins to rise in the book, however, it gets harder and harder to follow what exactly is going on. The narrator’s point of view begins flipping around between different characters—human and otherwise—and the storyline begins to be extremely abstract. Who is talking, who has died, who is no longer dead, who is colonizing who... it is very hard to keep it all straight.

Though the book raises fascinating questions about colonialism and our triumphalism about our spacefaring aims, the unfortunate reality is that much of this worthwhile reflection gets buried beneath the avalanche of weird, abstract computer dialog and confusingly tangled plot lines. The first half of the book is really engaging and interesting, but it really starts to peter out after that. Would I recommend it? I might, if you're a big Firefly fan, because it's pretty fun to listen to Fillion. But otherwise, I probably would skip over it.

DISCLAIMER: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for the purpose of a fair, unbiased review.

A great story that turned out to be disappointing.

It starts in the best possible way. An AI, more specifically an uploaded human mind, and his crew, three actual humans, land on a deserted alien planet to recover the valuables from a shipwreck: thus the title.

Their mission starts up on the wrong foot when the landing doesn't go as planned. They end up ways away from their intended drop site, with little to help them in this alien world. They have no other option than to brave the unknown and overcome some major hurdles. They need to finish the mission in order to get the payday and go home.

Mixed in with the description of this planet, we get quite a lot of science talk that grounds this story in the realm of the believable, making this a great sci-fi book for those who enjoy a more grounded world.

After a few adventures and mishaps, we meet the main antagonist of the story. Unfortunately, that's when the book lost most of its appeal to me. It goes from a great sci-fi to a mediocre mystery that left me wanting a better ending.

All in all, I would say the book deserves respect for what it achieves, in terms of worldbuilding, before the unsatisfying ending.

I had a good time with this book, and that's why it earns a 4-star (bordering on 3) rating.
________________
This book was provided for free in exchange for an honest review.
All opinions are my own and have not been reviewed nor influenced by the publisher.

When I heard there was a new space travel sci-fi book out and the audio version was narrated by NATHAN-freaking-FILLION, there was no stopping me from getting my hands on it. It literally sounded like the best possible Firefly substitute this nerd could get.

And it was, plus so very much more.

I had never heard of Yudhanjaya Wijeratne before The Salvage Crew, but I'm giving his body of work a good hard look now. This novel was technically intriguing, philosophically exciting, satisfyingly claustrophobic and suspenseful, and surprisingly irreverent all at once. Wijeratne packed such a rich bundle of everything I love about sci-fi into this one book, and as a result, has created a forever fan in me.

I don't want to give much away, but I must say I do love the AI point of view, when it's coming from a once-human consciousness. HAL in 2001 had his moments, but he was a human construct and couldn't give us the poetry (or feels) our Overseer does here. Or the existential inner dialogue.

As well, I appreciated the matter of fact ideas laid out about how true space travel could be achieved by mere humans. We have spent decades of sci-fi trying to figure out how a being with a ~80 year lifespan could travel bajillions of light years to distant quadrants without dilithium-fueled FTL speeds, worm holes or spore drives. But what if it's not hibernation we need to achieve to cross the universe, but rather uploading into artificial, exponentially longer-lived "bodies" or ships that can survive millenia? Apparently all the sentient beings are doing it -- we just need to get with the program!

A special thanks to Podium Audio and NetGalley who honored me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

3.75 stars
As much as I love Nathan's voice and narration and although the plot had me on my toes and wanting to know what happened next in the book, I felt like something was missing or I was confused about what was going on (in some parts) because there were a few chapters that I had to "reread" because I could not follow. It was a bit frustrating because it pulled me out of the story everytime it happened. But anyway besides that the story was engaging and very interesting and entertaining.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read/listen to this book in exchange for an honest review