Salvage (ARC Review)

Salvage | Alexandra Duncan

Published by: Greenwillow Books, April 1st 2014

Genre: YA, Science Fiction

Pages: 528

Format: Ebook 

Source: Greenwillow Books via Edelweiss (thank you so much!!)

Ava is the captain's daughter. This allows her limited freedoms and a certain status in the Parastrata's rigid society-but it doesn't mean she can read or write or even withstand the forces of gravity. When Ava learns she is to be traded in marriage to another merchant ship, she hopes for the best. After all, she is the captain's daughter. Betrayal, banishment, and a brush with love and death are her destiny instead, and Ava stows away on a mail sloop bound for Earth in order to escape both her past and her future. The gravity almost kills her. 

Gradually recuperating in a stranger's floating cabin on the Gyre, a huge mass of scrap and garbage in the Pacific Ocean, Ava begins to learn the true meaning of family and home and trust-and she begins to nourish her own strength and soul. This sweeping and harrowing novel explores themes of choice, agency, rebellion, and family and, after a tidal wave destroys the Gyre and all those who live there, ultimately sends its main character on a thrilling journey to Mumbai, the beating heart of Alexandra Duncan's post-climate change Earth.

It's no secret that Science Fiction books are my absolute favourite, so when I saw Salvage's cover and read it's blurb, I wanted to read it A.S.A.P. I had a lot of expectations and hopes going into this, and luckily they were all surpassed by miles.

I loved this book, from beginning to end. It had everything I hoped it would - spaceships, future!Earth, the terminology associated with ships and machinery that makes Sci-Fi books that more authentic - and a tonne of others I never imagined - the dark and bright sides of Mumbai, heartwarming friendships, a kickass heroine who refuses to be beaten and grows as a person with every chapter. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about this book.

Salvage is so many books, plots, and locations all rolled into one book and despite everything suggesting it should in no way work ... it works so well. The progression from place to place is natural, with reasoning instead of a random jump. It covers many areas of this new, post-climate-change Earth as well as the sky surrounding it, and builds an expansive and clear picture of the world in which Ava is living. Quite simply, Alexandra Duncan is a masterful world builder.

There were a few times when my reading lacked momentum but the world of Salvage drew me back, as well as my investment in Ava's future and her journey. At the beginning of the book I was urging her to speak out against her father and the society on her spaceship that was so clearly oppressing her - but she knew no different so of course she didn't, and though it frustrated me a little it was easy to understand why she'd remain silent, why she'd keep her thoughts unspoken. Good Parastrata women do not speak out.

It took being exiled from society and forced to flee her ship for Ava to see life beyond the limitations of the Parastrata, to see that she didn't have to be the girl she had been moulded into. Ava was beyond any words I have to describe her. I've never read a journey so vast and profound as hers. By finding herself in an unfamiliar, terrifying world with no friends or family to speak of and no way to survive, she finds herself. Despite experiencing grief and emotions that would cause most people to break down, she fights through it, and she refuses to be beaten. If you read this book for nothing else, read it for Ava. She's a girl like no other.

Characters ★★★★★

Setting/world building ★★★★★

Writing Style ★★★★★

"Alexandra Duncan's debut illustrates a richly detailed world that vividly shows a possible future of Earth where society has both regressed and progressed, where the struggles of humanity have become more dire, but where love still remains. Everything-from the world to the characters-felt viscerally real. Original and memorable." 

- Beth Revis, author of the nationally best-selling Across the Universe

"Epic in scope and intimate in execution, Salvage is an astonishing debut. Duncan expertly crafts a story of the journey to claim oneself across the infinite expanses of both space and the human heart." 

- Kiersten White, author of the New York Times best-selling Paranormalcy trilogy