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A review by marilynw
The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
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.