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stellarian's review
4.0
I liked the book a lot, but sadly the audiobook production was not great. Nathan Fillion expressed things well, but his volume was so varying there were many parts of sentences I could not make out. Yes, I am an ESL reader, but I usually don’t have that problem.
g2pro's review
2.0
The only reason I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 star is because the ending of the book was OK but the rest of the book is a long boring slog. If you like books were everything goes wrong and keeps going wrong then you might like this book.
lbryant's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
5.0
micksland's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Interesting premise; lackluster execution; uneven narration in audiobook format.
This is a science fiction story about a digitized human leading a crew of baseline humans on a salvage trip. A UN ship has crashed on another planet, and they're trying to recover the goods so that the corporate shareholders can profit. However, when they get to the crash site, they find that someone else beat them too it.
The story is fun. The narrator is a combination of a human and AI with a penchant for poetry, which allows the author to explore some intriguing concepts. The author is a proponent of human-AI collaboration. All of the poetry that the narrator "writes" throughout the novel is actually AI-generated instead of being written directly by the author. That's a cool concept and actually works very well for the novel; I would have never known without the author's explanation in the foreword.
The audiobook narration by Nathan Fillion was subpar. Fillion is a great actor and a less-great reader. His voice is gravelly and when he drops to a low register, the words become muffled and indistinct.
Finally, the last 1/3 of the novel took an incredibly strange plot turn that I did not enjoy. Despite this, it was still a fun ride with a very unique concept.
This is a science fiction story about a digitized human leading a crew of baseline humans on a salvage trip. A UN ship has crashed on another planet, and they're trying to recover the goods so that the corporate shareholders can profit. However, when they get to the crash site, they find that someone else beat them too it.
The story is fun. The narrator is a combination of a human and AI with a penchant for poetry, which allows the author to explore some intriguing concepts. The author is a proponent of human-AI collaboration. All of the poetry that the narrator "writes" throughout the novel is actually AI-generated instead of being written directly by the author. That's a cool concept and actually works very well for the novel; I would have never known without the author's explanation in the foreword.
The audiobook narration by Nathan Fillion was subpar. Fillion is a great actor and a less-great reader. His voice is gravelly and when he drops to a low register, the words become muffled and indistinct.
Finally, the last 1/3 of the novel took an incredibly strange plot turn that I did not enjoy. Despite this, it was still a fun ride with a very unique concept.
archaeomancer's review
4.0
Not really a fun romp in space like its oft compared to Firefly, but the framework of the story (Buddhist philosophy/poetry) was really interesting to read, and the ending really packed a punch! I was hoping for a bit more likeable characters and less death, more explorations of strange alien artifacts and less a bleak treatise on survival, but the ending really took my breath away and again, really like the inspiration for the background framework of how the main character's mind processed the world around it.
exlibris42's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
4.5
marilynw's review
4.0
The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, narrated by Nathan Fillion
OC is the AI/human overseer of a human salvage crew, sent to Urmahon Beta, to salvage an ancient United Nations spaceship. OC was once human but at one point OC lost most of his humanness when his mind was removed from his body and it's since been housed in a variety of machines...sorry I'm not explaining it well but I don't know how it really works. Being a Buddhist seems to be one of the requirements for this type of being "reborn". This rebirth happened centuries ago and OC is still working to prove himself for the time he might, if ever, move up in AI status. For now, his latest crew is three ragtag rejects that he doesn't even consider C team worthy on their best days.
Still, OC hasn't lost his humanity completely and he becomes attached to Simon, Anna, and Milo, who often fight like cats and dogs, practically trying to kill each other when OC and the trio get stranded on hostile Urmahon Beta, with not enough of anything to help them survive until they can salvage enough to merit being picked up again, by the company ship, name Ship. At some point, it seems that OC might be required to cut losses and just leave the others there but he won't, he feels an obligation to take care of his crew, especially when each of them rises way above what he first thought of them, to try to do what is right for each other.
Nathan Fillion does an excellent job narrating this book. Every pause, sigh, every inflection that he gives to OC's thoughts and speech, adds to the character. And OC is a poet, he spouts poetry all the time, he'll be in the middle of thinking/talking about something then he'll be reciting his poetry. Now, I'm not good at poetry but for the most part, I could somewhat understand what he was saying, as well as I can understand any poetry. The strange thing is that during some of OC's downtime (computer maintenance type downtown), when he's dreaming or whatever it is his mind does then, he awakens and finds that he's written poetry that he doesn't remember writing. He also has very vivid, horrible dreams of things happening to the crew, to him, and to his surroundings.
The surroundings are bad news. There are extremely hostile human/machine things with rotting, oozy flesh, trying to make contact with them and/or trying to kill them. There are gigantic sloth like monsters and small weird doglike things that want to attack them. There is what looks like a square boxed city but it's not a city. And the spacecraft that crashed so long ago still has bodies rotting inside of it. Then Simon starts going crazy and OC is hearing things. Everything is horribly wrong and OC can't contact Ship.
It turns out OC's poetry is important to the story which is where things went from 4 stars to 3 stars for me because I'm lost with poetry. And also because this became less about OC and his crew but about something much bigger than us humans and I'm there for the characters. But I slept on the story overnight and became okay with how the story ended and what became of OC and the crew, so the story went back up to 4 stars. There is more out there than just us and in this world that has been built, we have to change to be able to stay in the game. I really like OC and I came away from a very sad story, feeling like there was hope and a future...of something. Maybe it helps to be Buddhist, which I'm not, to understand this story better.
Published October 27th 2020
Thank you to Podium Audio and NetGalley for this ARC.
OC is the AI/human overseer of a human salvage crew, sent to Urmahon Beta, to salvage an ancient United Nations spaceship. OC was once human but at one point OC lost most of his humanness when his mind was removed from his body and it's since been housed in a variety of machines...sorry I'm not explaining it well but I don't know how it really works. Being a Buddhist seems to be one of the requirements for this type of being "reborn". This rebirth happened centuries ago and OC is still working to prove himself for the time he might, if ever, move up in AI status. For now, his latest crew is three ragtag rejects that he doesn't even consider C team worthy on their best days.
Still, OC hasn't lost his humanity completely and he becomes attached to Simon, Anna, and Milo, who often fight like cats and dogs, practically trying to kill each other when OC and the trio get stranded on hostile Urmahon Beta, with not enough of anything to help them survive until they can salvage enough to merit being picked up again, by the company ship, name Ship. At some point, it seems that OC might be required to cut losses and just leave the others there but he won't, he feels an obligation to take care of his crew, especially when each of them rises way above what he first thought of them, to try to do what is right for each other.
Nathan Fillion does an excellent job narrating this book. Every pause, sigh, every inflection that he gives to OC's thoughts and speech, adds to the character. And OC is a poet, he spouts poetry all the time, he'll be in the middle of thinking/talking about something then he'll be reciting his poetry. Now, I'm not good at poetry but for the most part, I could somewhat understand what he was saying, as well as I can understand any poetry. The strange thing is that during some of OC's downtime (computer maintenance type downtown), when he's dreaming or whatever it is his mind does then, he awakens and finds that he's written poetry that he doesn't remember writing. He also has very vivid, horrible dreams of things happening to the crew, to him, and to his surroundings.
The surroundings are bad news. There are extremely hostile human/machine things with rotting, oozy flesh, trying to make contact with them and/or trying to kill them. There are gigantic sloth like monsters and small weird doglike things that want to attack them. There is what looks like a square boxed city but it's not a city. And the spacecraft that crashed so long ago still has bodies rotting inside of it. Then Simon starts going crazy and OC is hearing things. Everything is horribly wrong and OC can't contact Ship.
It turns out OC's poetry is important to the story which is where things went from 4 stars to 3 stars for me because I'm lost with poetry. And also because this became less about OC and his crew but about something much bigger than us humans and I'm there for the characters. But I slept on the story overnight and became okay with how the story ended and what became of OC and the crew, so the story went back up to 4 stars. There is more out there than just us and in this world that has been built, we have to change to be able to stay in the game. I really like OC and I came away from a very sad story, feeling like there was hope and a future...of something. Maybe it helps to be Buddhist, which I'm not, to understand this story better.
Published October 27th 2020
Thank you to Podium Audio and NetGalley for this ARC.
apryde6226's review
2.0
I tried to like this book. I've always liked Nathan Fillion and he does a good job as a narrator, but I just couldn't come to like this story...
kybeaty's review
3.0
A fun book, the overseer is a neat perspective. A bit predictable in some ways, but still a good way to pass the time. I'd give it another half star if I could.
ericbuscemi's review
2.0
An interesting premise and the star-powered narration of Nathan Fillion couldn't salvage this one for me. First off, Fillion reads too fast. He's a good enough actor, and he did a good job with the characterizations, but he's just not a audiobook narrator by trade. As for the story, it went off the rails fairly quickly after an interesting first act, and I entirely stopped caring what would happen to any of the characters -- both the humans and the sentient ship.