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A review by charles__
Time Salvager by Wesley Chu
2.0
A degenerate future mines the past for resources and treasures. An off-the-rails salvager breaks the Time Law possibly changing history to save a woman’s life, but unveils a high-level conspiracy that history had already been horrendously manipulated.
Did-Not-Finish (DNF).
My dead tree copy was a hefty 380 pages with a 2015 US copyright.
Wesley Chu is an author of American science fiction series novels and screenplays.
I got to Chapter 14 and stopped reading. This isn’t a bad book. It’s just that it was too obvious to be interesting to me. With less than 300 pages to go, I cut my losses. I also didn't feel like getting involved in yet-another-mediocre-science-fiction-series.
Writing generally reminded me of a screen play. Dialog and action sequences were OK, but descriptive narrative as sparse.
Three (3) POV’s was too much for this story. I thought the Elise Kim character was good. The main James Griffin character was OK, but overplayed with regard to his demons. The Levin Javier-Oberon character was OK too, but we’ve seen this character's relationship to Griffin before.
Plot-wise, the story was very much by the numbers. By Chapter 10 I had an inkling of the conspiracy, by Chapter 15 it was confirmed and I already knew how this or the next novel ended.
World building was just OK. The author did a much better job with the historical past than the future. I thought the time heist of the Amber Room was well done. The Nazis were not. The important future scenes only received a cursory job. For example, Griffin’s escape to the ruined Earth's future Chicago with Kim showed how unimaginative he was about all the futures. A part of that narrative reminded me of a recent Orange Line ride, I'd taken. In addition, I felt that despite lip-service to maintaining the time line, very little actual planning went into the Time Jumps. The jumps seemed more like smash ‘n grabs to me. The author did have one or two good ideas about future tech though.
That the mystery was so obvious, the main character likewise too familiar, and the future so sketchily described in this series's first novel caused me to lose interest early. I guess I’m really picky about my time travel stories? However, the story should be easy to convert into a screenplay.
Readers interested in a much better time travel story should read, The Time Traveler's Wife .
Did-Not-Finish (DNF).
My dead tree copy was a hefty 380 pages with a 2015 US copyright.
Wesley Chu is an author of American science fiction series novels and screenplays.
I got to Chapter 14 and stopped reading. This isn’t a bad book. It’s just that it was too obvious to be interesting to me. With less than 300 pages to go, I cut my losses. I also didn't feel like getting involved in yet-another-mediocre-science-fiction-series.
Writing generally reminded me of a screen play. Dialog and action sequences were OK, but descriptive narrative as sparse.
Three (3) POV’s was too much for this story. I thought the Elise Kim character was good. The main James Griffin character was OK, but overplayed with regard to his demons. The Levin Javier-Oberon character was OK too, but we’ve seen this character's relationship to Griffin before.
Plot-wise, the story was very much by the numbers. By Chapter 10 I had an inkling of the conspiracy, by Chapter 15 it was confirmed and I already knew how this or the next novel ended.
World building was just OK. The author did a much better job with the historical past than the future. I thought the time heist of the Amber Room was well done. The Nazis were not. The important future scenes only received a cursory job. For example, Griffin’s escape to the ruined Earth's future Chicago with Kim showed how unimaginative he was about all the futures. A part of that narrative reminded me of a recent Orange Line ride, I'd taken. In addition, I felt that despite lip-service to maintaining the time line, very little actual planning went into the Time Jumps. The jumps seemed more like smash ‘n grabs to me. The author did have one or two good ideas about future tech though.
That the mystery was so obvious, the main character likewise too familiar, and the future so sketchily described in this series's first novel caused me to lose interest early. I guess I’m really picky about my time travel stories? However, the story should be easy to convert into a screenplay.
Readers interested in a much better time travel story should read, The Time Traveler's Wife .