Book Review: The Salvagers Series by Alex White

A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White
A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy by Alex White
Worst of All Possible Worlds by Alex White

This series recounts the exploits of a rag-tag band of adventurers, bebopping around a pretty hostile post war galaxy, flying in a decommissioned military ship.  A heavily armed ship, with a military trained crew.

Whatever they meant to be up to, these lost souls get involved in some very dangerous stuff.  The fate of humanity, if not all life in the galaxy, kind of stuff. 

The story unfolds with their discovery of a long lost, semi-mythical treasure ship “at the edge of the galaxy”, as the title suggests.  With luck, pluck, and a whole lot of shooting, they actually pull off some amazing feats.

But this turns out to poke a hornet’s nest of evil sorcerers, leading to yet more daring do, and a whole not more shooting.

Etc.

The good news is that White does a fine job fleshing out this fairly conventional scenario. 

The crew are an interesting bunch, with enough personality to render them human.  There is the conventional set of “oddball” personalities and relationships.  He gives the people complex histories, with plenty of war trauma in their past.

The tech is imaginative, well thought out, and well described.  It’s a big galaxy, so White has a lot of room to work with.  He does tend to choose capers that resemble raids on luxury casinos, but that’s part of the fun. 

There is a lot more shooting than I generally look for, and I’m not excited by weapons porn.  But White does a decent job with this stuff, without being overly pathological. 

The geopolitics is satisfyingly morally ambiguous.  He gives his crew strong moral character and grounds for their actions, but certainly does not glorify war or killing. The governments and organizations are filled with both good and bad people. Ans dos on.

The villains are rather over the top.  I still don’t quite understand the motivations of all the bad guys.  White also works in some contemporary themes, as the supervillains use information warfare, digital disinformation, and cultish ‘movements’ to further their plans and harry our good guys. Saving the galaxy leads to massive trolling on the link, denying and inverting what we know to have happened.  Etc.

I’m not really much interested in “military SF”, but I like this series.  White is a good writer, so these are good yarns.  The violence is mostly justified, and the descriptions are exciting but not prurient.  The characters have enough depth to be identifiable, flawed individuals. 

I think the key to my satisfaction is that these are written to be read as novels.  Too much contemporary fiction reads like the transcript of a video game or movie, which may well be how authors develop stories.  White’s scenarios, characters, and fights are certainly cinematic, but he does a good job of writing them as a story.

So – yeah, this is actually good pulp fiction.

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1. Alex White, A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe, New York, Orbit Books, 2018.
2. Alex White, A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy, New York, Orbit, 2018.
3. Alex White, Worst of All Possible Worlds, New York, Orbit, 2020.

Sunday Book Reviews