Kevin Steverson's Salvage Title

If you're a graduate of the military academy who was placed in the inactive reserve despite awesome grades what would you do? If you were Harmon Tomeral you would get a job scrapping derelicts from old battles and build yourself a mech to enter into the tournament that the Marine Corps held every year because winning could give you enough money to buy ship. Would it work? If you buy a copy of Kevin Steverson's Salvage Title you can find out.

I like Tomeral. If you haven't figured it out just from the paragraph above, his defining characteristic is that he doesn't give up. I can almost hear Tomeral saying, "Never tell me the odds" in Han Solo's voice. This guy just does not know when to leave well enough alone and, in a lot of ways, Salvage Title is based on his total defiance of the odds and willingness to bend the rules to suit his situation. Everyone should have a friend like Harmon because sometimes it's necessary to view things from a slightly different angle in order to figure them out. I once again find myself frustrated by the fact that fictional characters are, well, fictional because I want to have a drink with this guy.

That's not to say that Tomeral is all being and all knowing. In many ways, he's a brand new second lieutenant. He has a lot of knowledge of things military but not necessarily the experience needed to make full use of them. Steverson is, himself a veteran, although I have been unable to find anything stating what rank he attained while in. One suspects that if he wasn't a 2LT at some point in his life, he may have run into one at some point. It's interesting though, because while 2LTs can be the butt of jokes, Tomeral isn't that guy. He just hasn't done it for long enough to have grasped all the nuances that weren't covered in training. I short, he's a believable character that makes sense and that goes a long way toward making Salvage Title such an enjoyable read.

Salvage Title  does start a bit slower than I would usually prefer but it picks up nicely. It is also the first in a series (the sequel is entitled Salvage Fleet and is already live on Amazon) and sometimes it takes a minute to set up a series. The book does pick up nicely and by the time I hit the midpoint I couldn't stop reading. This is an action packed book full of fight scenes and awesomeness and, if some dark corner of my mind couldn't help but wonder if he was doing all of this fighting just to have stuff to scrap later, at least it doesn't appear that way in the work itself. I seriously doubt that he's NOT going to salvage some of the mess though. I said he was inexperienced. I never said he was dumb.

 Of course, to a guy who grew up on Star Trek, Star Wars  and Green Lantern there is very little more entertaining than an environment filled with all kinds of aliens and Steverson definitely delivers there. He's got tinkerer aliens and capitalist aliens and extinct aliens and all kinds of stuff. Tomeral's home planet of Joth is packed with all kinds of alien species in addition to humanity. I just eat this stuff up. What SF fan doesn't like weird looking, gift having aliens? I know the existence of aliens is a trope but became a trope because it's cool. I really enjoyed that aspect of the book. I hope we'll see more varieties in the sequel.

We don't necessarily get to see a lot of Tomeral's home planet Joth, but what I see I do like. It's an egalitarian society with easy access to weapons. This is not a planet where weaponry is reserved for only the elites and those who serve them and it shows in all aspects (that we can see, anyway) of their society. An armed society is not just a polite society. It is a society which is forced to accept the input of all because the consequences of ignoring those out of power has the potential to be truly horrifying.

It's not just that though. Joth is totally the "wrong side of the tracks." As a guy from greater Detroit, it's good to see a guy from the hated area succeed. Seriously. Tomeral gets denied a spot that he has earned because he's from Joth. He is denied a vehicle registration because he's from Joth. Everything bad that happens to him happens because he's from Joth. And he manages to shrug it all off and get 'er done anyway. I like this guy. I like the fact that he grew up somewhere hated. I really like the fact that he doesn't give up when it would be easy to do so. After all, who ever expected a kid from Joth to do anything good?

There are a lot of things left unanswered at the end of Salvage Title and, given the fact that it's a series starter, I really like that aspect of it. Steverson was clearly smart enough to know that you can't continue a series if you tie up all of the loose ends. There are the obvious ones that you'll come across simply by reading the book and at least one mass version of never found the body that leaves me unconvinced that one problem is as solved as we're led to believe it is. Time (and probably the sequel) will tell whether I'm right or not, but I'm a suspicious bastard on my best day, so I could be wrong here. Of course, the sun COULD rise in the west tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that it's likely.

Ignorance of any earlier work and a lack of desire to search Amazon to find out if I'm wrong lead me to believe that this is Steverson's freshman effort. While it kinda bums me out that I don't have a catalogue of Steverson works to catch up on, I'll get over it since I can claim to have been on board since almost the beginning after he publishes a bunch more books. I mean, let's face it. Being able to talk about how you've "been a fan since day one" is only half a step away from Nerdvana. In case you missed it, this means that I'll be picking up a copy of Salvage Fleet. This is also a note to Kevin Steverson (who may never read this) that you need to WRITE MOAR BOOKS!!!!! I can't brag about being down since the beginning if you only have two.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Wrecked Ships

Salvage Title
Kevin Steverson
Theogony Books, 2018

Salvage Title and Salvage Fleet are available at the links below: