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tavenorcd's review against another edition
4.0
Scott Arbuckle’s Scavenged has been sitting on my “To Read” shelf for quite some time, and I finally made a point of diving into it this past week. A quick read, I’m glad I made the plunge for a variety of reasons.
(1) It reminded me of my days playing XCOM. A good and bad trait for a book. For those who don’t know, the XCOM video games place you as the commander of a military group tasked with protecting humanity from UFOs. It’s fun! It’s tactical strategy, and the procedurally generated nature of the game means no two play-throughs are ever the same. And I never thought I’d read a book that would expand on this type of setting.
Which was cool . . . but I also felt like I was reading worldbuilding points straight from the game in certain chapters. Which made the book feel partially derivative. Not the worst series to derive your story from, though!
(2) It diligently explored moral questions of human advancement. Arbuckle expertly handles questions of humanity’s relationship with technology, particularly honing in on a classic moral question: “Do the ends justify the means?” Whether intentionally or not, by the end of the book, I found parts of my brain agreeing with the antagonists, which means Arbuckle wrote compelling antagonists.
(3) The pace of the book never slows down. Almost every chapter’s got its action scene, which made the book a gripping and fast-paced read. I actually finished the final third in about an hour on a Sunday morning.
With those points in mind, I’m going to emphasize my biggest gripe with Scavenged, and until I run it through my scoring metric, I’m not entirely certain how it will affect its score. If you read the Amazon description of Scavenged, you’re led to believe the tale focuses on Lyra and Orion, two positively wonderful characters whose dynamic really drives a decent chunk of the narrative.
However, the Amazon description neglects to mention Auriga, the other central character to this tale . . . and a character who may receive more screen time (so to speak) than Lyra and Orion. While I’m not an opponent of multi point-of-view books, every time Auriga’s chapters were in front of me, I wanted to know what was happening to Orion.
Auriga’s narrative is good; and it’s important to the moral questions of the tale (see (2) above), but at times, I felt like his story served more as a vehicle through which to explore cool technological and biological exploits, rather than to push Orion and Lyra’s story forward. Some of the longest, action-packed sequences occur in Auriga’s chapters, but given the care and focus applied to building Orion’s backstory, I didn’t really feel the stakes of Auriga’s potential death in these chapters. I cared about what happened to Orion; if Auriga died, it wouldn’t matter, because it would pull me back to Orion.
With all of that being said, the final chapters bring everything together in a satisfactory conclusion. Arbuckle has established a story with many open-ended strands it can follow; I’m excited to see where the narrative goes in Augmented, the sequel.
Now onto the scores!
Writing: 7/10. I enjoyed the fast pace of Arbuckle’s writing in Scavenged, though I consistently felt like some sentences were a bit wordy with words like now, indeed, still, that, and other filler words. That’s also my “editor brain” not being able to be turned off. Importantly, I don’t think I noticed a single grammatical error or typo in the entire book.
Characters: 7.5/10. Orion and Lyra (and Corvus) blew me away, but Auriga fell a bit flat. Another character (Vinculum) really sealed the deal on the ability of Arbuckle to write gripping characters, though, earning that extra 0.5 points.
Plot: 6.5/10. Given the criticism I dropped above, you might expect a lower score than 6.5, but I want to emphasize that Arbuckle has developed a compelling tale about humanity’s relationship with technology and more generally, evolution. It’s told through all characters in different ways, and while I disliked Auriga as a character, he will most likely appeal to other readers!
Setting: 7.5/10. As I said, I enjoyed the throwback to XCOM, though I wish I could have acquired a bit more understanding of the overarching political situation on Earth throughout the tale. There were hints to a fascinating relationship between anti-tech groups, a “resistance,” and a one-world government known as the Protectorate, but I didn’t get a true sense of what those groups meant. But the injection of the Lacerta in the tale bumped this score from a solid 7 to a 7.5.
Overall: 7.125/10. Just scraping into the 4 Star category, congratulations, Scavenged!
(1) It reminded me of my days playing XCOM. A good and bad trait for a book. For those who don’t know, the XCOM video games place you as the commander of a military group tasked with protecting humanity from UFOs. It’s fun! It’s tactical strategy, and the procedurally generated nature of the game means no two play-throughs are ever the same. And I never thought I’d read a book that would expand on this type of setting.
Which was cool . . . but I also felt like I was reading worldbuilding points straight from the game in certain chapters. Which made the book feel partially derivative. Not the worst series to derive your story from, though!
(2) It diligently explored moral questions of human advancement. Arbuckle expertly handles questions of humanity’s relationship with technology, particularly honing in on a classic moral question: “Do the ends justify the means?” Whether intentionally or not, by the end of the book, I found parts of my brain agreeing with the antagonists, which means Arbuckle wrote compelling antagonists.
(3) The pace of the book never slows down. Almost every chapter’s got its action scene, which made the book a gripping and fast-paced read. I actually finished the final third in about an hour on a Sunday morning.
With those points in mind, I’m going to emphasize my biggest gripe with Scavenged, and until I run it through my scoring metric, I’m not entirely certain how it will affect its score. If you read the Amazon description of Scavenged, you’re led to believe the tale focuses on Lyra and Orion, two positively wonderful characters whose dynamic really drives a decent chunk of the narrative.
However, the Amazon description neglects to mention Auriga, the other central character to this tale . . . and a character who may receive more screen time (so to speak) than Lyra and Orion. While I’m not an opponent of multi point-of-view books, every time Auriga’s chapters were in front of me, I wanted to know what was happening to Orion.
Auriga’s narrative is good; and it’s important to the moral questions of the tale (see (2) above), but at times, I felt like his story served more as a vehicle through which to explore cool technological and biological exploits, rather than to push Orion and Lyra’s story forward. Some of the longest, action-packed sequences occur in Auriga’s chapters, but given the care and focus applied to building Orion’s backstory, I didn’t really feel the stakes of Auriga’s potential death in these chapters. I cared about what happened to Orion; if Auriga died, it wouldn’t matter, because it would pull me back to Orion.
With all of that being said, the final chapters bring everything together in a satisfactory conclusion. Arbuckle has established a story with many open-ended strands it can follow; I’m excited to see where the narrative goes in Augmented, the sequel.
Now onto the scores!
Writing: 7/10. I enjoyed the fast pace of Arbuckle’s writing in Scavenged, though I consistently felt like some sentences were a bit wordy with words like now, indeed, still, that, and other filler words. That’s also my “editor brain” not being able to be turned off. Importantly, I don’t think I noticed a single grammatical error or typo in the entire book.
Characters: 7.5/10. Orion and Lyra (and Corvus) blew me away, but Auriga fell a bit flat. Another character (Vinculum) really sealed the deal on the ability of Arbuckle to write gripping characters, though, earning that extra 0.5 points.
Plot: 6.5/10. Given the criticism I dropped above, you might expect a lower score than 6.5, but I want to emphasize that Arbuckle has developed a compelling tale about humanity’s relationship with technology and more generally, evolution. It’s told through all characters in different ways, and while I disliked Auriga as a character, he will most likely appeal to other readers!
Setting: 7.5/10. As I said, I enjoyed the throwback to XCOM, though I wish I could have acquired a bit more understanding of the overarching political situation on Earth throughout the tale. There were hints to a fascinating relationship between anti-tech groups, a “resistance,” and a one-world government known as the Protectorate, but I didn’t get a true sense of what those groups meant. But the injection of the Lacerta in the tale bumped this score from a solid 7 to a 7.5.
Overall: 7.125/10. Just scraping into the 4 Star category, congratulations, Scavenged!
margaretadelle's review
2.0
I'm a huge fan of sci-fi, so when the author offered me this book for review, I was happy to accept.
Right off the bat I should admit most YA or teenaged-protagonist books are hit or miss for me. While I have found books that I adore, some general practices in YA keep me from delving too deep into the age range. For example, as in this book, over-powered teenaged protagonists. Both Orion and Lyra have long-winded backgrounds and experiences that would be more fitting for 20 somethings at minimum and master the abilities the Greys give them with next to no issue. They're hardly ever physically vulnerable, so even the biggest fight scenes didn't create a sense of fear for them in my mind.
As for the older protagonist, I waffled on whether or not I liked Auriga. Sometimes he felt like a walking stereotype, being referred to in the narrative as "The Mexican" and calling people "muchacho." He also switched greatly in goals constantly and tended to easily side with a new ally, even if they'd previously been against each other. Orion probably had the closest thing to a narrative arc and character qualities that felt genuine, even if he didn't feel like the teenager he was supposed to be.
The biggest struggle I had over all was the writing style. It's very purple academic prose that doesn't match up with most of the settings. The settings themselves were very well crafted, with the desert, city, and Grey ships all being very defined. But the writing style kept a high brow, ten cent word vocabulary that only fit with certain ones and was at odds with others. For example, 15 year old Orion, a desert scavenger raised in the wilderness with limited education and a general "do what it takes to survive" mentality, walks into a broken down shack in the desert after a long, thoughtful walk. The narrative refers to the interior of the shack as "an impoverished chamber" and Orion's thought process as "ruminations." It's like if someone was trying to describe Mad Max with phrases from Downton Abbey.
The biggest saving grace of this book is knowing that it's meant to be a tie in for a table top RPG. For all that the characters are iffy and the writing style is ill-fitted, the worldbuilding is there. There were multiple times that I thought "ah, this is a character type" or "this big thing would be a boss fight." There are many concepts, ideas, and character types that are intriguing. But I have a feeling they work better when you're sitting around a table with friends and snacks.
Right off the bat I should admit most YA or teenaged-protagonist books are hit or miss for me. While I have found books that I adore, some general practices in YA keep me from delving too deep into the age range. For example, as in this book, over-powered teenaged protagonists. Both Orion and Lyra have long-winded backgrounds and experiences that would be more fitting for 20 somethings at minimum and master the abilities the Greys give them with next to no issue. They're hardly ever physically vulnerable, so even the biggest fight scenes didn't create a sense of fear for them in my mind.
As for the older protagonist, I waffled on whether or not I liked Auriga. Sometimes he felt like a walking stereotype, being referred to in the narrative as "The Mexican" and calling people "muchacho." He also switched greatly in goals constantly and tended to easily side with a new ally, even if they'd previously been against each other. Orion probably had the closest thing to a narrative arc and character qualities that felt genuine, even if he didn't feel like the teenager he was supposed to be.
The biggest struggle I had over all was the writing style. It's very purple academic prose that doesn't match up with most of the settings. The settings themselves were very well crafted, with the desert, city, and Grey ships all being very defined. But the writing style kept a high brow, ten cent word vocabulary that only fit with certain ones and was at odds with others. For example, 15 year old Orion, a desert scavenger raised in the wilderness with limited education and a general "do what it takes to survive" mentality, walks into a broken down shack in the desert after a long, thoughtful walk. The narrative refers to the interior of the shack as "an impoverished chamber" and Orion's thought process as "ruminations." It's like if someone was trying to describe Mad Max with phrases from Downton Abbey.
The biggest saving grace of this book is knowing that it's meant to be a tie in for a table top RPG. For all that the characters are iffy and the writing style is ill-fitted, the worldbuilding is there. There were multiple times that I thought "ah, this is a character type" or "this big thing would be a boss fight." There are many concepts, ideas, and character types that are intriguing. But I have a feeling they work better when you're sitting around a table with friends and snacks.
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