Friday, January 11, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy by Alex White




A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy is the second book in Alex White's "The Salvagers" trilogy, following his "A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe" (which I reviewed here).  I enjoyed the first book in the trilogy, which had some "Firefly"-esque vibes - misfit crew, veterans of a lost civil war, looking for a big score/discovering a massive conspiracy - but didn't quite love it.  Still, it was a promising book with some interesting ideas, and I liked most of the cast, so I was interested to see how the sequel would turn out.

I'm really glad I did, because A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy is a lot more fun than its predecessor and is a major step up as a result.  I noted in my review of the first book that the first book lacked the witty dialogue of a series like Firefly, and this book corrects that and then some - the dialogue involved here is endlessly quotable.  And while the story remains darker than Firefly, with some clearly influenced by the real world plot elements, it all comes together rather nicely and never becomes "grimdark".

Minor spoilers for the first book follow.
-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Having exposed the Harrow conspiracy, the crew of the Capricious has spent the last few months attempting to find and eliminate the remainder of the "Gods" who stole the magic from Clarkesfall and caused the planet's devastation.  Now reunited with Boots and having picked up a pair of twins with the "Reader" mark (for mind reading), they begin to work on the few leads they have toward what the conspirators might be up to with their plans disrupted.

But while the Galaxy was thankful to the crew for a time, a Cult with ties to the conspiracy has been busy spreading rumors and false information to sully the crew's names and to allege that the conspiracy was never real to begin with, and real people around the galaxy are beginning to doubt.  And the conspirators' infiltration of the local governments mean that the crew's goals will only be achievable if they go it alone...something made harder by their own fame.

Hence a pair of plans is devised - the crew escapes from the government's space and obtains disguises and plans two simultaneous infiltrations - Boots will infiltrate and steal a document linked to the Conspiracy in a bank while Nilah will infiltrate the Cultists' training grounds in order to make contact with a double agent.  But the conspirators are considered "Gods" for a reason, and the one the crew finds themselves against now is a master of shadows, who threatens to envelop them all....in a deadly darkness.
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A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe created a fascinating Space Opera universe in which its residents all generally - with few exceptions - had one type of magic at their disposal.  It was also a dark universe, with most of our heroes being survivors of a planetary civil war that tore apart a planet and with all of them being damaged as a result of it - and with the discovery near the end that the series' antagonists were responsible for the catastrophic event that instigated the war.  And in that universe the book set up a crew of misfits, with different magics, trying to make a big score and in the process uncovering a galactic conspiracy.  It was a really interesting setup, but the book didn't quite do enough with it - it had parts that were amusing but never committed to that, and it had some dramatic action scenes but never excelled at that either.

A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy does both really damn well.  The characters, now set-up, are allowed to breathe and work really well, with witty dialogue between them being near endlessly quotable.  Having now established who the crew members are, each of them is given more time in the spotlight even if we still are seeing the story entirely from Nilah and Boots' points of view, and each of them really develops in interesting and new ways, including the two old crew members who barely got any time last book and the two new ones who join the crew in this one.  I complained about the Firefly comparison last book because the first book lacked the witty banter and interactions of the show, but those things are here in spades and again make this book really enjoyable.

And the book contains some really fun set pieces and action scenes in this book, allowing the skills and magics of each of our heroes to really shine.  The book goes from set piece to set piece rather quickly, in a wide variety of circumstances, and while the stakes never quite seem as high as in the first book, they're still pretty damn breathtaking to read and the plot never loses momentum.  I definitely look forward to reading the trilogy's conclusion coming out later this year, although there's a lot of stories left to tell in this universe, so I'd be unsurprised if the series somehow went on longer.

Again, it's not a perfect book despite how much I enjoyed it - and I enjoyed it a lot.  Our heroes in the multiple set pieces get badly injured at an absurd frequency and are able to patch themselves up just fine, which felt a little weird after it kept happening.  And I wish we'd expanded our points of view to get say Orna's POV, because I still don't really get the romantic relationship between Nilah and Orna - oh if you presume the two being in love makes sense, then the relationship's development in this book is rather sweet, but I still can't quite figure out how Orna fell in love with Nilah, which was also part of my problem with the first book.

Still, this series has gone from "enjoyable but not really making me that excited to read more" to "I want more absolutely now" which is pretty damn high praise from me.  I'll be reserving the third book from the library as soon as it comes out, that's for sure.
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