Time Salvager

By: Wesley Chu

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins

Length: 15 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

Time Salvager: a fast-paced time travel adventure from Wesley Chu, the award-winning author of The Lives of Tao.

Convicted criminal James Griffin-Mars is no one's hero. In his time, Earth is a toxic, abandoned world, and humans have fled into the outer solar system to survive, eking out a fragile, doomed existence among the other planets and their moons. Those responsible for delaying humanity's demise believe time travel holds the key, and they have identified James, troubled though he is, as one of a select and expendable few ideally suited for the most dangerous job in history.

James is a chronman, undertaking missions into Earth's past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. The laws governing use of time travel are absolute; break any one of them and, one way or another, your life is over. Most chronmen never reach old age; the stress of each jump through time, compounded by the risk to themselves and to the future, means that many chronmen rapidly reach their breaking points, and James Griffin-Mars is nearing his.

On a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets Elise Kim, an intriguing scientist from a previous century who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, and in violation of the chronmen's highest law, James brings Elise back to the future with him, saving her life but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, somehow finding allies, and perhaps discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity's home world.

©2015 Wesley Chu (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Grew on me like a beard.

Didn't much like the narrator at first but would not like to hear anyone else to finish out the series. .. only complaint is the constant misuse of the phrase couldn't care less.

READ THIS! Decent Story, Poor Narration...

NO SPOILER. I liked the overall story of this book and the summary is accurate... however, there isn't a lot of mystery involved in this, which I missed. I wasn't constantly asking myself "Who is that?" or "What does that mean?" like my favorite books. The time travel aspects were pretty good and the other bits of technology fit together nicely. It wasn't overly scientific in explanation so you got to move on in the story at a good pace. I really feel like the book would have been better on paper because the narrator uses a much too ominous tone for every sentence. A generic action such as "He took a drink of water." would turn into "*heavy breath* He took a drink ... *breath* of water!" Every single word was read like an action sequence. It got very annoying. The ending was a let down with no closure in my opinion. I listened at 1.5X speed to save some time. I might recommend this to avid time-travel fans. For the best time travel on Audible, check out Replay - Ken Grimwood, Lightning - Dean Koontz and the Christopher Ride series. See my other reviews. If any of this was helpful, please click YES below.

Couldn't stop listening

I would love to write a thorough review but its 4 in the morning. I listened every spare minute I had and although I couldn't wait to see what happened at the end now I can't wait to find another book in the series. Very well-developed characters and interesting science behind the science fiction.

Brilliant Story, Sub-par execution

Would you try another book from Wesley Chu and/or Kevin T. Collins?

The story was not the issue for me. It was a unique and nicely developed idea, the characters were well crafted, the future world they lived in was nicely put together. I felt that the author had the story 95% developed. The major turn off was the many unnecessary "F" words and I felt that often times the main body of the story was put on hold as the characters minds would 'meander' through non-critical details that never came out as important and didn't add to the character. Simply a bit more fine-tuned editing and it would receive 5 stars from me

What does Kevin T. Collins bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The narration was welldone, no complaints there. Diction, prose, accents, character changes all great

Do you think Time Salvager needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

I think the story could have been continued easily!

Great plot

Loved the plot setup and storyline but this book was a bit too fantastical for my taste. Think it would have been better executed if time travel was the only major technological advancement the main character had. Everything surrounding “bands” became a bit cheesy in my opinion. Regardless, the plot and characters were interesting so I still devoured the book!

Good book, but feels like Captain Kirk reads it

Really, the story is good and all, but the performance was irritating. Stops and commas everywhere, and you could hear when a recording session just started from the way he narrated normally, and then started to get caught up in the book and got back on his Shatner ways. A live example of how a performance turns a good book into mediocre.

What's up with the narrator?

Good sci-fi story. The narrator is awful. Shattner-esque. Constantly pausing between the words of a sentence or dialogue. Very distracting.

good story, annoying narrator

narrator's excessively clear enunciation of every word and constant dramatic tone is unnatural and annoying.

Interesting premise. So So execution

There are times in the story where the main character's emotional issues with his past are played up to a degree that had me close to dropping this book and looking for another. While the issues raised are needed to explain the characters motivations in the story arc, they are over emphasized to the point of distracting from the story.

Mr. Collins has one major draw back as a narrator in my opinion. He tries to use his voice to heighten the drama or emotional content of scene, but is seems forced and distracts instead of heightening. I did not hear as much of it in this book as in others he has done, but it is still there.

excellent story well narrated

This was a good story with likeable characters and a novel story line. It wasn't too predictable and it wasn't too unbelievable. Lots of room for a sequel and I hope we'll see one, because we all want to see Valta (?hard to tell spelling in an audiobook) get their comeuppance.