Review: Salvage Title

Salvage Title by Kevin Steverson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A fun, but ultimately simplistic story.

I picked this up as a free book to review, but its cover art and summary appealed to the SF fan in me. Salvage Title is a fun read but isn't particularly complex or complicated. The plot is simple, the characters are straight forward with few flaws, and everything pretty much goes as planned. It's a one-dimensional story that focuses on blowing things up and steamrolling opponents who constantly underestimate the heroes. In that respect, it may appeal to some YA audiences, but to me, a plot without many challenges or twists and a practically unstoppable group of protagonists gets tedious and predictable after a while. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a bad or unpleasant book, but the characters and plot don't have the sophistication needed to make it a really good book. However, as I believe this is one of Steverson's first published books, I think there's enough potential to explore other books he's written since to see how he's progressed as a writer.

In the audio version of the book, KC Johnston's performance is pretty solid. He narrates each character with a unique voice and creates distinct sounding speech for each of the five or six alien races that appear in the novel. His tone was appropriate and varied and he kept things upbeat and exciting through most of the book. I wouldn't hesitate to pick up another audiobook narrated by Johnston.

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