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A review by micksland
The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
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.