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The Salvage Crew cover art

The Salvage Crew

Written by: Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
Narrated by: Nathan Fillion
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Publisher's Summary

Award-winning actor Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Castle, The Rookie) brings to life a snarky artificial intelligence you won't soon forget. Don't miss his hilarious performance in a story perfectly crafted for sci-fi fans of The Martian, Red Dwarf, and We Are Legion (We Are Bob).

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.

©2020 Yudhanjaya Wijeratne (P)2020 Podium Audio

What the critics say

"Yudhanjaya Wijeratne's ingeniously crafted The Salvage Crew starts with a comforting science-fictional familiarity, before using its A.I.-co-authored idiosyncrasies to hurtle headlong into the gravity well of its considerable ambition. A novel of meteoric energy, flaring brighter and brighter as it falls further into its world." (Indrapamit Das, Lambda Award-winning author of The Devourers)

"A classic sci-fi adventure wrapped around a deeply philosophical core. With skillful plotting, interesting details, and a motley crew of humans and A.I., it's a story that embraces its meta-origins...with an ending worth waiting for." (S.B. Divya, Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated author of Runtime and Machinehood)

"With animation and wry humor, Fillion introduces listeners to OC, an artificially intelligent yet poetic overseer...with tenderness and sorrow [he] conveys OC's dawning realization that their mission has turned into a nightmare. Fillion's talents are undeniable...." (Audiofile Magazine)

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What listeners say about The Salvage Crew

Average Customer Ratings
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  • Overall
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great narration

Loved Nathan Fillion as narrator. Storyline kept me interested and the characters were raw and real. But again, Nathan as narrator was perfect for this project!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great book

An interesting story and a fantastic performance by Nathan Fillion. I definitely enjoyed this book.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

audio won't play

audio won't play doesn't matter what I do every thing else works just not the audio

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

It's ok......

Nathan Fillion was the best part of this book. Story was ok but just couldn't really get into it.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Enjoyable listen, angelic voice

Whimsical at times, I couldn't stop listening as the story wove through the struggles and hardships in vivid detail. an excellent piece to add to your collection.

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Unique and not what it appears to be.

I'm glad I listened to it, it was worth the time. No spoilers, but it plays out much differently than it seems like it will.

There is an extended survival horror part at one point and I found that section a lot more drawn out than it had to be though. It's interesting and compelling, but there is more time spent on the psychological awfulness than was needed to get the point across in my opinion. Besides that, the whole idea of a salvage mission to an alien planet that starts to go deeply wrong and the crew has to deal with the situation using lowest bidder cheap materials was unexpectedly gripping and well executed.

Again no spoilers here, but I would say that while I was satisfied by the ending I didn't like it in terms of that I wanted things to have gone a different way. However, it was satisfying in terms of being interesting and thought provoking and having big ideas.

Nathan Fillion's narration was a mixed bag for me. He has this smooth expressive voice, but the pacing of how he read had a bit of a staccato stop-start quality to it. He reads in these short bursts. It just took awhile to get used to, but I did get used to it eventually.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

not bad

not that good finisher but didn't really enjoy it all and all it was ok I found the narration good

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fun easy read!

Certainly nothing life changing, but funny, well written, wonderfully read, and just all around enjoyable! Bonus points for the boatmurdered name drop, put to rest any question I had as to weather or not I was reading Rim World fanfiction. Not complaining, its great. The narration was great, maybe not the greatest set of varied voices I have heard, but a great job none the less. Only real gripe would be the length, as I feel like a little more time could have been spent on world building, and the really empty ending, I feel like it might be hoping to continue as a story, but I would have liked a more rounded ending for these characters than set dressing for a would that might not get fleshed out further.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Surprisingly Uninteresting

The concept of the story is fascinating and the narrator is great, but for whatever reason I found myself unable to pay attention to this audiobook. I've listened to a lot of audiobooks, and have seldom found myself so uninterested in a story and so uninvested in its characters. Just not my cup o' tea, I guess.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Lovely concept, complicated ending

Absolutely loved Nathan's rendition but the end goes a little crazy and complex at the end. Still love it though, Nathan does a convincing job with all the characters and their mental states/emotions.
looking forward to his next narrated book.

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