Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

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


Jacket Blurb: They thought this was just another salvage job. They thought wrong.

An AI overseer and a human crew arrive on a distant planet to salvage an ancient UN starship. The overseer is unhappy. The crew, well, they're certainly no A-team. Not even a C-team on the best of days.

And worse? Urmahon Beta, the planet, is at the ass-end of nowhere. Everybody expects this to be a long, ugly, and thankless job.

Then it all goes disastrously wrong. What they thought was an uninhabited backwater turns out to be anything but empty. Megafauna roam the land, a rival crew with some terrifyingly high-powered gear haunts the dig site, and a secret that will change humanity forever is waiting in the darkness.

Stuck on this unmapped, hostile planet, lacking resources, and with tech built by the cheapest bidder, the salvage crew must engineer their way to payday...and beat Urmahon Beta before it kills them all.

Experience this space exploration adventure told from the perspective of a snarky artificial intelligence you won't soon forget.

Read for November 2021 book group. Read as an audio book and regular book.

Touching on the audio - loved Nathan Fillion as narrator, but unfortunately, however it was recorded, I couldn't understand what he was saying. His voice ended up being muddled and mumbled. I did read and listen for a while, then just abandoned the narration and read as normal. Which was a major bummer. Consensus was the same with others in book group.

I greatly enjoyed this. Loved the premise, interesting characters, interesting world building, a bit of an unconventional plot where it's not all rainbows at the end. AMBER ROSE's sarcasm was fantastic, I loved SHIP even tho she had such a minor role, the human characters were interesting and behaved like, well, realistic humans. The Buddhist concepts were a delightful change from the usual Jesuit's in Space that show up more frequently in SF.

I did hit a stumbling block about two-thirds of the way through after a major reveal. The overall plot became more narrative and a bit blah blah blah and I found myself skipping pages. One book group member concurred, and three others said that was one of the best parts of the book. Interesting interpretations.

I'm trying very hard not to drop any major spoilers, so going to end here and say, well worth reading, but skip the audio.

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