The Salvage Crew by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne (2020)
Intense
Book cover blurb
They thought this was just another salvage job. They thought wrong.
An AI overseer and a human crew arrive on a distant planet to salvage an ancient UN starship. The overseer is unhappy. The crew, well, they're certainly no A-team. Not even a C-team on the best of days.
And worse? Urmahon Beta, the planet, is at the ass-end of nowhere. Everybody expects this to be a long, ugly, and thankless job.
Then it all goes disastrously wrong. What they thought was an uninhabited backwater turns out to be anything but empty. Megafauna roam the land, a rival crew with some terrifyingly high-powered gear haunts the dig site, and a secret that will change humanity forever is waiting in the darkness.
Stuck on this unmapped, hostile planet, lacking resources, and with tech built by the cheapest bidder, the salvage crew must engineer their way to payday...and beat Urmahon Beta before it kills them all.
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My Review
I bought this book after reading the first couple of pages. I thought, this sounds like some crazy fun, I'll have some of this, thank you very much!
Alas, the witty voice at the beginning gives way to quite a serious and somewhat depressing, if that's the right word to use, story.
But, once I'd adjusted my expectations I actually enjoyed the read. The small cast of characters made it very easy to feel involved with all the goings on and attached during all the ups and downs. Mostly downs to be honest. The ever-optimist AI overseer was a treat, I really liked his character. But using 'Replicants' and even eluding to Blade Runner jarred me out of the story. It just made my brain shoot off to the movies, instead of focusing on this story.
Poetry being the key to alien first contact felt a bit of a stretch though. But then who knows, maybe!
But yeah, I liked this one. I wanted to give it a 4-star rating, but I just couldn't get there, mainly because I'm not that much of a hard sci-fi type.
My copy of this novel
Aethon Books hardback edition.
Published in 2020
292 pages
ISBN 9781949890709