Reviews

A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy by Alex White

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heyt's review

4.0

So this was a fun and fast read because as the second book in a trilogy the characters are familiar and comforting. I enjoyed this for what it is, the equivalent of a summer movie with lots of action sequences and things blowing up. It was great to see the whole crew reunited with some new faces to go along for the ride. We see everyone working together for a common goal of taking down the nefarious bad guys.

gotoboston's review

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4.0

Much better than the first one. This was action packed from beginning to end, and the character development was much smoother. I could see the growth in each character and it felt like a natural progression instead of the choppy, awkward development from the first book.

We had some new characters introduced, but for the most part we focused on the same crew from the first book. Which, I always think is good. Authors sometimes throw in too many new characters in a second book and that strains the character development. Here, there was only really two new characters and they got a solid character arc and development, while the original cast also got to grow and develop.

Overall, really good and I'm looking forward to the third book.

nghia's review against another edition

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2.0

I had a vague memory of enjoying the first volume of The Salvagers -- apparently I gave it 4-stars on Goodreads, but didn't leave a detailed review. It was a mixture of Firefly and the Fast & the Furious, set in an improbable world of science fiction where everyone has magical abilities. It was a fast-paced story of outcasts engaging in heists, uncovering conspiracies, and saving the universe.

When I picked up the second book in the series, I immediately felt a bad omen. It took me 30+ pages to barely begin recalling the characters. Boots is rich? How did the happen? Is...Nilah the racer one? Not a good sign that they were so forgettable. Even later in the book they mention people like Didier (who?) and Stetson Giles (apparently the archenemy of Boots?) and the names didn't even ring a bell.

Still, I decided to power through it. That seems like the right phrase because with each page it felt more and more like a chore. I think one of the major problems is that it is just way too long for its own good. Well over 400 pages. Imagine if a Fast & Furious movie lasted 4 hours. It is just heist after heist after heist. Some of which end up having absolutely no bearing to the plot. There's a subplot about making contact with a mole and helping him escape. Which they eventually do but...nothing he tells them is used in the plot.

That kind of bad plotting is the ultimate downfall of the book. There certainly isn't anything you'd call real character development to hang your hat on. There's a trite & forced fight between lovers (which is solved by a 5-minute conversation when they actually get around to talking about it). There's some poorly developed stuff about the twins that just goes nowhere. And...I think that's it in terms of character stuff in the entire 400 page book. Everything else is just plot plot plot.

Which can be fine it is done well. Except it isn't done well, for the most part. It is too busy trying to build spectacle to make things coherent. Even if you swallow major absurdities like a bunch of what are essentially cargo-haulers pulling off a bank robbery of the most heavily guarded bank in the universe...with 24 hours of planning. Or finding that the previous guest in their hotel room left behind an eidolon crystal capable of powering a military battleship's warp drive. (Because of course people forget things like that when packing.....) Or when they are asked for the access code of their hotel room -- which is something they have! -- and instead of just saying it, they murder the half-dozen servants in the room; just to have a meaningless shoot-out. Or when they rob a guy's house, leaving witnesses behind who know where they are headed next, and then are shocked, shocked I tell you! when the guy tracks them shortly afterwards.

Salvagers is unabasedly "cinematic". But where movies know they can only throw two or three set pieces at you, Salvagers isn't satisfied until it has done it dozens of times. It isn't enough that they have to engage in a dozen heists. But also ghosts from the past! get thrown into the mix for both Boots and Orna. Because one wouldn't have been enough.

Reading the last 200 pages or so felt like a chore rather than a joy, so I won't be picking up the final volume in the series.

windjamm's review against another edition

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5.0

The first book was wonderful, but this second feels like a realization of all these queer, moving pieces.

mirificmoxie's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

jodihannah's review

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4.0

This series is such a wild ride. I absolutely love it. I'm always wondering what's going to happen next. And I love the fact that none of it should really happen, and White totally knows that, so they feeds that feeling into his characters. I'm not talking the physics shouldn't happen (though, you know, there's that, too). I'm talking, the likelihood that all of these events just happen to turn out ok for our heroes probably wouldn't happen. But that's sort of the fun thing about this series; it's the best of escapism.

As with many second installments, this novel didn't hold up as well as the first one. I think it did a pretty great job, but there were parts of the beginning that dragged a bit. But overall, the plot picked up fairly quickly and did a great job of carrying the story along. The ending, though, was probably the real triumph.

Spoiler

The death of Armin hit me hard. I really appreciated his data ability and his general weird relationship with Boots. But, after he died, I'm not going to lie I really didn't know a whole lot about him - not like I know about all the other characters. Between him and Aisha, I would be hard pressed to pick them out of a lineup of characters.

Here's the thing, though. The reason I couldn't give this 5 stars was because this book, far more than the first installment, through me out of the story a couple of times and that was really hard to deal with. The first time it happened was when Armin brought Nilah the tea. I really didn't expect that at all, and it didn't really feel like an "Armin" style. Maybe that was the point the author wanted to make, that none of the crew really "knew" Armin except perhaps for Captain Lammar. But, if that was the point, I would have expected to come up sooner, say, in the first book?

This sudden jarring out of the story by a mishandled introduction happened a number of times. For example, the introduction of pronouns. I'm super happy that novels are tackling pronouns these days, but why were they introduced only half way through the second book? Shouldn't this have been going on since the beginning? The introduction of these pronouns felt contrived the first time White wrote them in; I was tossed out of the story and immediately thought, "Ah! I'm woke!" before I could jump back into the story. Again, I think if these had been introduced in the first book, I probably wouldn't have thought much about it.

But, perhaps the most frustrating part of this book for me, and the one that took the 5 star away for good, was the use of the word "schadenfreude". Seriously. Here's the thing about the word "schadenfreude": in English, "schadenfreude" is a fad word. What I mean by that is that it's sort of like a meme in that it's a hot button word that people really like and ten years from now it will be *almost* extinct from our language because it is very rarely used (let alone used correctly) and people can't pronounce it. Out of sight (or, in this case, out of mouth) out of mind. That means that the use of this word in this novel is going to date this novel so darn bad. Like, really bad. Like people are going to look back at this novel and say, "ah, yes, this was published in the 20 teens" and they won't be wrong. Am I being completely ridiculous? Yes. Yes I am. Did this word literally jar me so hard out of the novel that I had to put it down and come back to it later? Yes. Yes it did. Therefore, I had to take a star away.

But, overall, I really enjoyed this book. I am absolutely in love with Boots and Nilah and Orna. I think they are beautiful characters. And I really can't wait to read the third installment of the series.