Kevin Steverson

Steverson, Kevin. Salvage Title. Salvage Title No. 1. Theogony Books, 2018.
I am always attracted to books that feature people in the future making a living in space. Harmon, a space academy graduate but without the social pedigree to make for a successful career in the fleet, runs a small space salvage company with a few of his human and alien buddies. Their luck seems to change when they find an ancient alien warship and a strong ship AI that is insulted when you say its intelligence is show more artificial. The galaxy is populated by several sentient species, most of which seem to be closely based on terrestrial analogs—opossums, badgers, reptiles and insects. The less cuddly ones are the baddies. No points for originality there. After the first few chapters, the book ceases to be a space-industry story and become rather straightforward military science fiction. You find a warship, what else are you going to do with it? Dialogue is better than average. Action is engaging. 3 solid stars. show less

Steverson, Kevin. The Salvage Fleet. Salvage Title No. 2. Theogony Books, 2018.
The Salvage Title series progresses about the way one would have predicted. Harmon and his alien and AI buddies have to amass a force to fight the Squilla and their allies. In other words, the series goes full military SF. No more working stiffs in space, which was, I thought, the most engaging element in the first novel. The aliens are still fun, but the battles are ho hum. Three stars.

Started rough, got worse

Desperately needs editing.

Sentences were short. They had one piece of information. They tended to be a bit pedantic. It was bad writing.

The plot was intriguing, but it soon fell into MartySue land. Some of the plot devices were so ham-handed it hurt to read them.

1,000 years in the future two orphans on a desert planet in a far off solar system shared with multiple other races would not know what an iPod is. Even if one of them really liked old Earth music. Trying to show more add in your favorite band to this is just stupid.

Halfway through the book and they had just gotten their ship!! The first half had nothing to do with a ship.

There are far better things to read. show less

Started rough, got worse

Desperately needs editing.

Sentences were short. They had one piece of information. They tended to be a bit pedantic. It was bad writing.

The plot was intriguing, but it soon fell into MartySue land. Some of the plot devices were so ham-handed it hurt to read them.

1,000 years in the future two orphans on a desert planet in a far off solar system shared with multiple other races would not know what an iPod is. Even if one of them really liked old Earth music. Trying to show more add in your favorite band to this is just stupid.

Halfway through the book and they had just gotten their ship!! The first half had nothing to do with a ship.

There are far better things to read. show less