Salvage Title

The Salvage Title Trilogy, Book 1

By: Kevin Steverson

Narrated by: KC Johnston

The Salvage Title journey begins!

They couldn’t afford a ship, much less the cost of registering one. But there is always a loophole....

Harmon Tomeral wanted nothing more than to go to space. Sent to an orphanage when his parents were killed in a sandstorm, the odds were stacked against him. Despite that, he made it to the academy and graduated in the top 10 percent of his class...only to find out the fleet did what it wanted, regardless of regulations, and he came from the wrong planet.

He didn’t give up his dream, though, because where there’s a will, there’s a loophole, and Harmon and his friends found their loophole in the Top Fleet Marine competition - the winner would get 100,000 credits, which would just be enough to start their own salvage company. If they could build a mech and win the competition, they would be set.

But the fleet had already shown they didn’t want him in space, so it would be an uphill fight. Good thing his friends and crew were very much against fleet regulations.

©2018 Kevin Steverson (P)2018 Kevin Steverson

The book was great- the audio is simply awesome

The story comes alive with this presentation. Even though I'd read the book when it first came out, this audio reading made the characters come alive in a whole new way. It was as if I was rereading an old story and rediscovering the wonder of its creation. I recommend this one to any and all who crave a good well told story.

Clever

I love protagonists who achieve their goals in clever ways. This book has that, plus humor.

All a bit too easy...

Main character was a bit of a Mary Sue, there was almost no character development. I enjoyed all of the tech and weapons and all the continuity. Buy in the end when every problem had a back pocket answer, it just killed the vibe of the story.

Awesome listen!

Loved this action packed book! I can totally see them making it into a movie.

Diamond in the rough... very rough

This book, and the reading of it, we're thoroughly middle of the road. KC Johnston is good with accents and can keep things steady. the editing on this leaves something to be desired though, considering the fact that someone went through and edited out every single time KC took a breath, but was unwilling or unable to have and read up some portions with awkward timing or with awkward pronunciation. at times, it felt more like Mr Johnston was coming up with the story on the fly, then at least the constant pauses and lackluster word choice would make some amount of sense.
Clip loves to use the phrase "I'm on a ship of fools" constantly, and it gets very grating very quickly.
the writing feels like a high schooler writing it or someone who's not very experienced with writing anything other than research papers and writing for AP creative writing courses. certainly not a confident fiction writer.
Lastly, the cover art for this book and the others in the series contain ships that are painfully close to copyrighted material for a few different franchises, like Battlestar Galactica and Stargate. I'm unsure how the cover artist wasn't sued for it...

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.

Fun but sophmorishly presented YA story.

This was a fast, fun story for young adults. Don't expect any literary excellence or engaging insight into anything. That said, I'm an adult who enjoys well written, fun YA sci-fi and both the writing and narration here is just sophmorish. I'd probably be more enthusiastic if I didn't have a trilogy here and no second book anywhere in sight. I'm willing to try the next installment if it ever happens but will feel cheated if it's not available at least in writing before the end of the year.

Space Bullies Beware

Harmon Tomeral has been working in a salvage yard, trying to figure out how to get into space. Tomeral and his two friends/roommates build a mech to enter a Marine competition, hoping to win the 100,000 credit prize so they can buy a spaceship and start their own space salvage company. Tomeral is tough, having come out of an orphanage and learned lots of life’s hard lessons. He wins the competition, embarrassing the marines and military leadership. The military pays Tomeral the prize credits, but in an account that he can’t access as a reservist. The junkyard boss has a soft spot for the boys and hates to see them get abused by the military so he buys them a spaceship from a retiring salvager, and they go to work fixing it up, adding an AI they found in some scrap, and hiring a crew to help run the ship. After a few missions and some luck, the crew finds an ancient midsized warship from the AI’s forgotten star system. Using the AI’s knowledge, they restore the warship and try to sell it in their home system, but the military is still sore about the Marine competition, so they try to freeze the ship and crew in red tape. Tomeral finds a loophole, registering the old ship with a salvage title, and the name Salvage Title. The crew jumps out of the system, hoping to sell the Salvage Title for millions of credits, but they end up in a trap. The buyer is a greedy bully, which sets Tomeral and his crew off. They figure out how to use the ancient warship’s defenses and fighters and destroy the bully. With a better understanding of the Salvage Title’s power, they decide they might want to keep it so they go find a full crew. The book ends with Tomeral and crew saving his home system from an alien invasion seeking to exterminate the humans. What I loved most about this book was Tomeral’s attitude and the fact that the good guys win despite the challenges.

This is for underdogs, hard workers, and treasure seekers.

really like the book. the audible wasnt as good.

it needs more narrators for the voices. one person just isnt enough to do it right.

It is a good scifi tale

I thought the crew gets too lucky sometimes, but it was a good plot in general.