Salvaged

Biggest contender for biggest letdown of 2020 (bookwise, becuase it's 2020) Let me preface this with Scifi Horror, is my FAVORITE genre, and one so often done terribly. I went into this probably with overally high hopes. My partner even went "Kelsey, don't get too excited, you'll probably get mad, it's not gonna be Ship of Fools". I should have listened to him. So the concept is SOLID. Cool POC woman from an important family, but due to a falling out has tried to escape from them by taking on essentially a space janitor job. On one of her clean ups, an important one, as she's messed up one too many times and if she messes this up she's fired. The ship she's cleaning is a code blue ship meaning all crew are dead. However, upon arriving at the ship the reads indicate they are not dead. DUN DUN DUN I have to, unfortunately, set this to spoiler because I can't discuss my problems without major spoilers. So sorry in advance. The start I've allotted this book is purely for the first 67 pages. These pages were well written, established a sense of foreboding, and were really successful. They outline how she comes to be at the ship in question. After this point, the book falls 100% apart. At this point she's on the ship and encounters the first crew member, has seen the fungal substance, and is scared. I'm scared. It's spooky. This part feels like it was written separately, at a different time, she was feeling confident and had a good game plan. But then she just shoehorned the rest, without thought or intention. The biggest thing that destroys this book instantly is that she writes from multiple perspectives. The first 67 pages are purely from the perspective of the main character, but as soon as we encounter the crew the book jumps between the crew member's perspective, the main character's and the most damning of all, the fungus momma herself. Why is this such a problem? This is supposed to be a scary book. Fear comes from many places, but one of the biggest places is the unknown. Not knowing someone's intentions, or what's happening exactly. When Rosalyn encounters the first crewmate and learns of the fungus infection and how the crew "is fighting but maintaining control" we are unsure of if this is true, or if he's just lying to her, being manipulated by the fungus. That's scary. That could lead to a book of psychological uncertainty and manipulation. But now, the author decides for some reason, we need to see it from the crewmate's perspectives as well. This eliminates every possible unknown. We know exactly what there intentions are, we know exactly when they are lying, we know exactly when they have and they don't have control. There is nothing scary about knowing. As soon as this writing style was introduced I knew it wasn't going to work. I wanted so badly to have it work. I forced myself to not DNF it, hoping beyond hope I was wrong. That'd she'd rock it and prove me wrong but she didn't. The majority of the time the crewmates perspectives yielded nothing of worth. I skipped a chapter at one point, then felt bad and went back and read it, but it added nothing, I could have just skipped it. That's a problem. My other issue is with Rosalyn herself, our main character. Beyond the initial annoyance of a character described multiple times as being Indian in the book, but the cover art is of a beautiful black woman. Like at least there is some POC rep, but I'm sure Indian readers would have loved some of that rep correctly portrayed on the cover. But my problem is she's not well fleshed out or written, and honestly doesn't need to be in the book. For one, trauma is not a character trait. I'm sorry, it's not. Unless you can show rather than tell, through the actions of the character how their trauma has affected them, it's not a trait. In this it's brought up when she's being attacked by a big infected dude, a situation where trauma or not, someone would be frightened. It's brought up to garner sympathy from a love interest. Because somehow in the span of 48hrs on this ship with infected people, our female lead HAS TO FALL IN LOVE. The book claims she's needed for her credentials. But why exactly. Once the ship is no longer in code blue, why would some random salvager's credentials do something the CAPTAIN of the ship couldn't. Doesn't make any sense. Every single thing that happens, could happen without her there. She does nothing but runs around being afraid her filters are going to go bad. With being able to see the other crew's perspective, this book could have been just trying to fix the situation while maintaining control of their minds, no salvager needed. Now that would be an interesting book. Also, her rich dad and his company are set up to be some notorious big bad in this all, and all that just fizzles out to a "guess they are involved". Only to be seen again in the epilogue where she'd testified against them. Like no sweety, you'd be murdered to cover up their secrets, but k. The big baddie was a let down too. "Foxfire" the general consciousness of the fungus, who doesn't have great control over the things she infects and tries to act like their mother. Who wants these credentials for some reason. Who just didn't prove to be scary at all, or necessary. Just fungus turning people rabid would have been more interesting. She and her backstory were pointless, underdeveloped, and boring. The same level of tension could have been created without fungus at all, just with good old fashioned space crazies and trying to get away from a crazy crewmate. The majority of the book is about these crewmates being kept alive via fungus and being part of a hive mind. A super-weak hivemind, that doesn't seem to do anything. The crewmate's do a good job fending it off mentally until the author decides it's time and suddenly Foxfire can just take over, that could be interesting like she always could but just waited. But instead, it was framed like she figured out all their weak spots back to back. This idea was weak. Finally, the finale. The finale was just so underwhelming. At some point they decide to go against all prior judgement and go to a space station (like what, and infect everyone?) only to find the station is already infected, but dormant? But conveniently enough they remain dormant long enough for them to set the self to destruct before the start not being dormant. Cue action scene right? Wrong. Cue stealthy escape Alien style? Cue entering a way to high-level dungeon in Skyrim and just running past everyone to freedom while screaming "peace out" yes. Literally, nothing happened. Had they chosen to spend more time there, and not been dormant, and created a stealthy entry and escape, it could have been really good. Like, imagine Ellen Ripley just ran through the Nostromo, hit the buttons and ran out. While the Alien just was stuck in place somewhere. Like, come on. If you want your readers to feel something give us something to feel beyond a shoehorned romance that makes absolutely no sense. Like the Captian and Rosalyn are going to get back to wherever they are from and go "oh dang, now that we have other option, I don't actually know you". So overall. This book was not well thought out, written and not spooky at all. The author threw out every opportunity she had to make it interesting and scary and decide relied on tropes, bad writing decisions, and just a general lack of ideas. At a certain point, it felt like she was actively trying to do everything wrong writing-wise. Like a published author, with multiple books, couldn't possibly miss every chance to do a good job that she created for herself and purposefully choose to do a bad version. Am I mad? Yes. Is this a rant more than a review? Yes. Can someone please suggest to this "Alien" and "The Thing" obsessed girl an ACTUALLY GOOD horror scifi, please? I'm starting to think "Ship of Fools" is the only one out there.

A smart, resourceful heroine will keep you interested. The all encompassing terror will keep you awake. Hope will see you through to the end. There are a few holes, but they are easily overlooked when you are so intently worried about the characters and what happens to them. Rosalyn is uniquely equipped to deal with the threat that Foxfire presents, and for humanity, it's lucky she is a survivor.