Review of "Time Salvager"

"The Time Laws are there to ensure the integrity of the chronostream."

     In Wesley Chu's Time Salvager, time travel isn't just a topic about which to write fantastic adventures; it's a gritty, rough-and-tumble world with its own business and an arsenal of rules for characters to break. Take James Griffin-Mars for instance. James is a Chronman working for ChronoCom, the politically neutral organization in charge of regulating time travel. Over the years, he has made hundreds of jumps into the past in an effort to salvage energy sources and lost pieces of technology to keep human civilization afloat in the present. There are many Time Laws to remember, but the first is most important of them all: never bring someone back from the past. When James breaks this law on a "golden ticket" trip to 2097 Earth, he finds himself on the run on a decaying planet he's spent his life avoiding. More importantly, he finds the scientist he risked his neck to save may be on track to cure the world humanity thought it'd lost forever.

     In James Griffin-Mars' world, everything is falling apart. Earth is a wasteland, useful only due to its rich history of people owning technology modern humans need. If a Chronman times it right, he can steal what he needs just before it is destroyed, therefore leaving as few ripples as possible within the chronostream. Sure, rural villages may end up with a few more legends and there may be fewer pieces of art to be found in a burning building, but these are acceptable losses. Chronmen travel the solar system in ships called collies, living a nomadic life until they buy their freedom, get promoted, or set their collie on a crash course into Jupiter. Everything in this 2511 is described diligently and realistically, sculpting a future that is quite believable.

     The protagonists here number three, the secondary characters around ten. Such a small cast leaves the author plenty of room to expand his heroes' backgrounds and develop their personalities. Chu definitely takes his time setting up the conflict, and uses every experience and confrontation to alter the way James, Levin, and Elise think and act. By the time the book ends, everyone has morphed into a slightly different version of themselves. It's nice to see that the characters don't become complete strangers as the story progresses.

     Despite this, however, Chu's writing leaves something to be desired. Whether James the Chronman, Elise the scientist, or Levin the Auditor are drinking whiskey, trekking through a crumbling city, or fighting for their lives, the scenes in which they partake are written with the same sense of pacing and similar tension levels. This makes for some pretty bland fights, which is sad because the characters and their world are actually rather interesting.

     If this was a movie, it would definitely be rated R for its use of crude language. Commonly used curses have become "black abyss" and "by Gaia", but others remain the same. "Sh--" and the F-bomb are used frequently, both utilized in their original context on a regular basis. This neither adds to nor detracts from the story, shaping the culture in which James lives through dialogue alone. Though scenes that actually involve romance are detail-free, certain characters are prone to making crude remarks.

     I would recommend this book to older readers interested in a straightforward time travel novel with intriguing protagonists in a sturdily built world. Though the writing style saps much of the excitement from the story, Elise, Levin, and James are well-crafted and relatively easy to read, which is always a plus. Add that to the worldbuilding and fascinating premise, and you get a good, thought-provoking book with plenty of adventure to boot. It sits squarely at four stars.