Time Salvager

James Griffin-Mars lives roughly a thousand years in the future in a world in which humanity has colonized most of the Solar System, but in the process has consumed its resources and wrecked the Earth. Rather than merely making do with what they have left, humanity has turned to the past, sending "chron-men" like James back in time to recover equipment and other resources just before they vanish from history. All of these elite time travelers are supposed to follow the "laws of time" laid out centuries earlier by the "Mother of Time" Grace Priestly, which guide and restrict what the chron-men can and cannot do in their sojourns to the past.

Despite being at the top of the heap in an elite profession with high pay and extensive show more privileges, James is not a happy man. The stresses of working as a chron-man plus some pretty significant personal issues have taken their toll. James drinks heavily, fights at the drop of a hat, and is generally surly and unpleasant to most people. In addition to the progressively increasing nausea induced by time travel, the psychological toll of meeting so many people in the past just as they are about to die has begun to seriously wear upon him, reminding him of his own lost younger sister. Unfortunately, James also cannot quit, because no other profession is nearly as lucrative and he is committed to working to the end of his twenty year contract, encouraged by financial exigencies to accept riskier and riskier jobs for the larger pay outs. Eventually matters come to a head, and while on a hazardous and highly unorthodox mission to recover equipment from the Nutris Station, James violates the prime law of time travel and brings doomed researcher Elise Kim back to the future with him.

This sets the plot in motion, as James proves to be spectacularly inept at keeping his illegal companion a secret, and before too long Auditor Levin Javier-Oberon is on his trail for violating the Time Laws. As if that wasn't bad enough, Valta Corporation's Securitate Kuo forces her way into the pursuit, using Valta's economic clout to allow her to dominate the hunt with her ruthless methods, much to Levin's consternation. The story becomes an extended, high-paced, and action-filled game of cat and mouse as James tries to hide from his pursuers while also hopping back in time to supply Kim with the equipment she needs to possibly reverse the blight that has consumed Earth's oceans and also provide for the small community of scavengers with whom the pair have taken up residence. The only real flaw in the book is that Securitate Kuo is portrayed in a manner that is so unreasonably mustache-twirling evil that she is simply not believable. When she demands that villagers be moved summarily, that is callous, but she has something of a basis for her position, but when she insists that the inhabitants of an entire community be annihilated because they unknowingly traded with a fugitive, she steps into the realm of cackling cartoon villains. It seems like this extreme portrayal was included to bring her into conflict with Levin, but it seems like there should have been a better way to do this than to transform her into a Snidely Whiplash style caricature.

Time travel is an inherently difficult genre to write, as the questions it raises often sink the narrative with contradictions and plot holes. Time Salvager poses some interesting questions, at least some of which I hope will be answered in future volumes. For example, chron-men like James go back in time to recover stuff ranging from massive Titan generators to lumber and coal. But we are told that many of the problems faced in the "now" of the book are because much of the technology of the past has been lost. So why don't the chron-men go back and recover this lost knowledge? One wouldn't even have to worry about waiting until something was about to be destroyed to avoid disrupting the time stream, because you could just copy the information and bring the copy back. Given the volume of corruption that is revealed in the course of Time Salvager it might turn out that some powerful group is prohibiting such information retrievals, but thus far this seems like a relatively odd plot hole. Another plot element that I hope is addressed is that there are no time travelers from the future. Given that ChronComm is busy sending people back in time in the "present", one has to wonder if there is some organization (or organizations) in the future sending people back to now. As far as the book goes, no one seems to be aware of any people coming back to the "now" of the book from the future, and if I were an inhabitant of that time period, that would worry me. I suppose the lack of curiosity about such issues could be attributed to the fact that everyone spends much of their time scrambling just to survive in the harsh, dystopian world presented in the book, but it seems like something that someone would be thinking about them.

There are some other issues with the time travel in the book that seem like they are less amenable to explanation. We are also told that time travel is positional as well as temporal - in order to travel to an event in the past, you have to travel to the spot where the event took place. If you want to travel to an event that took place in the eastern Mediterranean, you have to go to the eastern Mediterranean and then time travel to the chronological spot you want to get to. But the entire Solar System is moving. The Sun travels in its orbit around the center of the Milky way at about eight hundred thousand kilometers an hour. Over the course of a few hundred years, that means that the Sun, and the rest of the Solar System, will move hundreds of millions or even billions of kilometers. So why don't time travelers appear in empty space millions of miles deep into the Oort Cloud? The other question the time travel in the book raises is the incredibly comprehensive nature of the records that ChronComm seems to have about the people of the past. On one of his jaunts to World War II, James has to kill a German soldier. When he returns he finds out that the soldier was supposed to survive and live for a couple of decades more before he and his family were all killed in a car crash. For a society situated a thousand years into our future, those are some incredibly accurate records. Even now our records of what happened in World War II are often sketchy, so to imagine that they will be that well preserved that far into the future stretches credulity a little bit.

The final somewhat odd plot hole in the book relates to the improbably good records pf the past that this future society seems to have. The reason they need these records is that having them allows the chron-men to avoid disrupting the time stream and changing the course of history. But given that the world of the future is a horrible wreck, why is everyone so very interested in preserving it? The Earth is almost uninhabitable due to environmental decline and the ravages of multiple nuclear wars, to the extent the Solar System hasn't been stripped of resources and also devastated by war, it is controlled by authoritarian corporations that control the lives of their employees almost completely. So why would anyone be interested in preserving the timeline of history that led to this miserable dystopian future? Why hasn't anyone suggested intentionally changing the past in order to change the present? Where are the rogue time travelers who are trying to do just that? The book does show us rogue time travelers, but they only seem interested in seeking refuge in the past so they can experience hedonistic pleasure, which seems like a valid reason to stray, but doesn't seem like it would be the only reason. Surely it has occurred to someone that altering the past might actually make the world of the present a better place, so why has no one tried this? These are the sorts of questions that time travel stories always spark, and these are the sorts of questions that make them so difficult to write. I hope that Chu is able to deal with some of them in future books, because if he doesn't, it seems like there will have been some serious missed opportunities.

Is Time Salvager sunk by these issues? No. In fact, that these questions exist is a testament to how good the book is. A time travel themed book that didn't raise these sorts of questions would be unimaginative, and probably uninteresting. When one combines this collection of questions with the fact-paced and action-packed story provided in this book, the result is something that is definitely worth reading. Not only is the book full of action, it is also full of interesting characters doing interesting things, most notably Elise Kim and Grace Priestly, both of whom come from outside of the present time and manage to offer perspectives on the world that upset the assumptions of the "present day" inhabitants, a fact that I don't think is accidental. From the world-weary James, to the optimistic Elise, to the cynical Grace, to the loyal Smitt, to the idealistic Levin, to the villainous Kuo, the story offers the reader characters that are guaranteed to generate equal parts endearment and rage in the reader, and puts them ringside for a gripping plot that sends everyone on a collision course with one another.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less

Don't you just love when some of your most anticipated books of the year turn out to be worth the wait? I was very happy with Time Salvager, ladies and gents.


You might have noticed that I've been on sci-fi binge for the last couple of weeks. I took a break from this genre a few months ago, and had a craving. Time Salvager fit the bill.


I would describe this book as time travel dystopia. Very little happens in space, mostly the action concentrates on Earth in a very bleak distant future. To my delight Wesley Chu's writing reminded me of Max Barry's Jennifer Government and Lexicon. There is a unique concept. It's super gritty, harsh and heavy on evil corporations conspiracies. Needless to say, I loved it!


James Griffin-Mars is a show more cynical, highly depressed chronman, one of the oldest in his profession, and he loathes his job so very much he wonders if each new job will be his last as he turns his ship to the sun and just let it burn. What he does is salvages pieces of precious equipment and resources from the past timestreams for interplanetary corporations, because in the last few centuries the civilisation went to hell and lost the majority of its technological advances.


Then he lands a very lucrative job which will allow him to retire within a year and live like a king on a luxurious planet. All he needs is to salvage precious equipment from a sinking research facility in the past within a very short time frame.


However, it all goes wrong from the very beginning. He meets a brilliant scientist committed to saving the environment from the plague, which decimated the Earth of his time; his information about the project is incorrect, and what's even worse, he detects a presence of another chronman at the same facility.


Too many questions and not enough time. Suspecting the worst sort of conspiracy, James goes rogue and saves the scientist, breaking the most important rule of his organisation: don't bring people back from the past.


Now both hide on polluted, abandoned Earth and try to find a way to cure it from the plague, while an army of chronmen and corporate security ruthlessly search for them all over the place.



Time Salvager is action-packed and intense, full of fresh, innovative ideas and has great, dramatic world-building. However, you might have noticed that I didn't give it higher rating. There were issues.


First of all, the romantic involvement between James and Elise was neither here nor there. I had an impression that the author felt it necessary to include one, but it did nothing for the plot development, and was very unconvincing.


Secondly, the ending let me down. I expected some sort of a wrap up, but everything ended very suddenly, leaving me dissatisfied. I invested myself in this book, and I felt slightly cheated.


Otherwise, I can't recommend it highly enough. Fascinating characters, great background and non-stop action with juicy time travel tidbits. Read it! show less

Review from Tenacious Reader: http://www.tenaciousreader.com/2015/07/20/audiobook-review-time-salvagers-by-wes...

4.5/5 stars

Time Salvager has all the strengths of the Tao series (action, humor, etc. etc.), but with a completely fresh world and setting. I found the entire world and plot to be very original and captivating. In a future (and not so accommodating) earth, not only have humans mastered the art and science of time travel, but they are also running short on some critical resources. The solution is to send key teams of highly trained operatives (chronmen) back in time to retrieve what they need. In order to not disrupt the natural order of time, they salvage these resources from just before some disaster strikes that would show more destroy them.

This aspect of it reminded me of Jo Walton’s Thessaly series, but instead of procuring art, they are preserving and cultivating resources that would normally have been destroyed. But where Walton’s books are slow and full of art and philosophy, this book is full of fast paced action, adrenaline, and a filthy earth that has has been through some devastating events between now and then.

Needless to say, sending men back in time just as disaster strikes is a dangerous thing, and chronmen don’t have a very impressive life span. James is starting to break, he’s been doing this for long time by chronmen standards. He is haunted by deaths of people long dead, people he has seen die during his salvages. It’s a hard thing to step into a disaster zone and know even if you could stop it, you can’t because time is a fickle thing and who knows what changes he could trigger by altering anything. History is written, it is their job to preserve that. He has just one final mission. Surely he can do that, right? Well…. we like stories, so of course something can and will go wrong.

There is only one law that is a bigger offense to break than altering history itself. And that is bringing back people from the past. But in a moment of panic (or clarity, depending on how you look at it), James ends his final mission with a passenger. A woman who should have died in the explosion that occurred at his last salvage site. This quickly put him (and her) on the run, and exposes a whole set of fun politics and agendas within the corporate world that enforces time travel laws.

Listening to this as an audiobook was actually a great decision. I have no doubt I would have loved the print version as I did with Chu’s other books. But I have always felt those books would make great audiobooks as well. Kevin T. Collins gave a wonderful performance, bringing life to Chu’s words. This is one of the books that after listening to it, I almost feel more like I watched it. This is a wonderful credit to both Chu’s ability to allow the reader to so clearly visualize what is going on (without any excess of words), and Collins ability to do those words justice with just the right amount of personality and emphasis.

Chu once again gives a world full of excitement and action, and of course, there is also a brilliant sense of humor that shines through at all the right parts. show less

Full disclosure, though I am writing this review for the ARC, I actually had the distinct pleasure of being a beta reader for an early draft of Time Salvager last year, and I just want to say now that being able to experience this story again felt even more amazing. Wesley Chu has already shown a flair for writing thrilling sci-fi adventures with his Tao trilogy, and there’s no doubt that his new novel is another strong entry into the genre.

Time Salvager takes us to a future where Earth has become a toxic wasteland. Those who could afford to get off-planet have long since taken their lives to the outer solar system, but this dispersion has also created a greater need for resources to support the population – resources that Earth is show more no longer in a position to provide.

Enter ChronoCom and their elite corps of time-traveling agents, aptly known as “Chronmen”. If the present can’t provide the resources that humanity needs, then they shall plunder the past. However, messing around with the chronostream is always dicey, so chronmen are dedicated to keeping their ripples in the past as small as possible so that the timeline can heal itself before effects can be felt in the present. This means that a lot of rules put in place, and the harshest punishments are brought down on those who break them.

Unfortunately for chronman James Griffin-Mars, on his final mission in the twenty-first century to secure his retirement, he experiences a moment of madness and breaks the most important and unforgiveable rule of all. Unstable and already close to snapping, James spontaneously decides to rescue a young woman named Elise from her fated death and brings her back to his time. Viewed as a temporal anomaly that must now be eliminated, Elise is forced to go on the run with James as the full might of ChronoCom descends upon the two fugitives.

Firstly, time traveling stories are always tricky to pull off, and admittedly I can’t think of too many where some willingness to turn a blind eye to temporal paradoxes and contradictions is at least required. Time Salvager is no different, though to Chu’s credit, the time traveling system he proposes is compelling and well-developed. Even though it may not stand up to heavy scrutiny, the process behind the technology lends itself perfectly to the story which will delight readers who are in it for the action and the entertainment. In other words, yes, you’ll probably have to roll with the punches, but at the same time I’m hard pressed to think of any other instance where doing so has been more fun.

Those who have read the author’s Tao series may also notice that the story of Time Salvager has a darker, more despairing vibe. Much of this has to do with the protagonist of James, whose long years working for ChronoCom and salvaging dead-end timelines has exposed him to too much death and destruction. Added to his overall jadedness are the dangerous physiological effects of doing too many time jumps, the character of James Griffin-Mars is definitely not singing a song of sunshine and rainbows. Perhaps the only reason I like Wesley Chu’s Tao books slightly more is because of the emotional cocktail of desperation, hopelessness and pent-up rage that is James’ personality. It fits who he is and makes for interesting development later on in the novel, but it does give Time Salvager a certain gravitas and makes it a heavier read.

Chu, however, did impress me with his characterization of Levin Javier-Oberon, the ChronoCom auditor tasked to capture James and Elise. With his complex view of the world and the way he believes things should be, Levin became my favorite character as soon as he was introduced as a point-of-view character. I can’t even really bring myself to name him as the antagonist; it doesn’t seem fair just because Levin is rigidly tied a set of moral standards that happens to be the antithesis of James’. I hope we’ll see more of Levin in the next book, because I’m not ready for his tale to be over yet, especially given how the book ended.

It goes without saying, I’m really looking forward to the sequel. Time Salvager feels like the next big step in Wesley Chu’s writing career, which continues to rise promisingly. This book does a fantastic job setting up for a fast-paced sci-fi thriller series that is brimming with potential, and you really can’t ask for much more. show less

James is a Chronoman, one of the elite few who travel back through time to try and salvage what he can for a broken present without disrupting the timeline. It’s a thankless, desperate soul destroying job that only seems to postpone the inevitable – and James is sure he cannot endure much longer

Until, in the past, he meets Elise and does the unthinkable – he brings her to the present. He breaks the most fundamental time law and now he is a fugitive pursued by his own agency and worse, one of the most powerful mega-corporations in the solar system who have their own nefarious agenda.

But Elise brings with her something even more precious - hope

I love the world building of this book – it’s a truly fascinating dystopian world show more where the people of our far distant and ruined future are using time travel to literally mine their past for the resources they need to keep the future functioning.

I love the whole concept of the time laws – ways to remove things from the past, to claim resources and items, without actually disrupting the time stream. Inevitably that means hastily grabbing items before massive disasters and catastrophes, taking things that would be destroyed anyway so the time line isn’t disrupted.

There’s a wonderful theme of how decayed everything is becoming in this book which is done excellently in two ways. Firstly, we have the very overt descriptions of just how terrible things are. A lot of these are from James’s memories of his life in brutal refugee camps and his experiences of other times. We then have Elise with her very overt horror over what the world has become, how destroyed the Earth is, how things she took for granted as basic items of life have now been all but lost to the ravaged

But this first track is underpinned more subtly by the lots of little hints that things are getting worse, resources are getting more stretched – from the lack of chronomen each year, to the sheer desperation of having to send people back in time to harvest things like wood, to the fact each time and place can only ever be used once. We clearly see that the desperate temporary measures they’ve taken to try and keep humanity going are not going to last forever. It adds together and really informs the plot by adding not just the “everything is terrible” which is common in dystopians but also, with excellent subtlety, pushing the addition sense that “and it’s all going to get so much worse.”

This really does affect the whole story – the despair of the Chronomen becomes so much more apparently when you realise they’re swimming up stream and losing ground. Levin’s epic nobility and rigid following of the rules seems all the more pure – and all the more pointless – when we see the state of the world. Valta corporation’s ongoing greed and appalling self-interest seems all the more small minded and destructive in the light of this despair.

Which brings up another awesome element of this world building – time travel. Time travel allows us to see the solar system through the various points in history where they salvage from – and we see the many many many times and places where humanity have done their utmost to destroy themselves. Through this history of destruction and war we see the same mistakes being made again and again –and continuing to the present with the corporations replace the many factions constantly contending for dominance, chewing through resources and leaving destruction in their wake.

This all lead to the wonderful conflicts of the chronomen, according vast privilege and power but by continuing to go back in time they are the ones who are most aware of how broken things are and continually have to do terrible things for the sake of the future. We see this through James’s terrible mental conflict and degradation as he is constantly faced. As an interesting parallel (which this book is full of – it really is excellent at its themes) we see the time agency itself with all is power and privilege, ultimately riven with corruption and completely helpless and ineffectual considering the corporations’ control. Again, perception of power is grossly undermined by the reality behind it.

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Time travel that does some new and interesting things, mostly to do with motivation and the psychology of it. Science fiction with a richly developed setting and inventive gadgets. People and problems that, for all they’re 500 years from now, feel real—not always relatable, but real. (It is, after all, a sign of good writing when things are so believable they make you angry.) Some of James’ character stuff felt a bit off to me, like it was either really well-done mental illness or poor narrative motivation, but I suspect at least some of that will get resolved or clarified in the next book. Which I will be reading.

7/10

June 2015-Preview Excerpt via Netgalley: Exciting and fast-paced. Must buy full book now!

Oct. 2015, finished novel. Slightly less fast-paced overall, but still an exciting book. There was a moment during the book when I actually thought "saving this world requires two people and both of them are women" and that was pretty cool. The problem for me is that I liked all of the supporting characters far more than I liked the main character. Still, I'm interested in the plot (especially with the twists at the ending of this book) and will read more.