A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe (The Salvagers, #1)

by Alex White

She pulled off her helmet and listened for sirens, for the banshee wail of race cars, for the roar of the crowd, but all she could hear was silence.

Great intro. World-building only in the interstices of the narrative, a lot of sympathy churned up for our heroine, and a smooth exit.

the Harrow was a Taitutian conspiracy theory about a legendary warship capable of wiping countries off planets.

She recognized it instantly: Mother’s spell.

Uh oh! Plot complication!

The image of the Lang Hyper 8 race car caught her attention from the corner of her eye. The Carrétan News Service flickered above the automated kiosks, showing her car entering the tunnel at the Awala GP alongside Cyril Clowe.

Geez, clumsy storytelling. She walks in, and immediately sees her own story pop up on TV?

Jean Prejean.”

Related to Jean Valjean? 🤪

But why? What was he getting out of it?

Oh, c'mon! He has learned you might be clued into a treasure of wealth and power and that's all you can imagine?

Whatever caused his generosity, she hoped it had nothing to do with the Harrow conspiracy.

Okay, a tiny bit less than completely oblivious, but still…

hypertuned engines,

That phrase makes no sense. Tuning an engine means to put it in optimal operating condition. By definition, there's nothing *beyond* optimal.

Soon they inhabited a slowly expanding cloud of metal, rubber, plastic, regraded steel, and fibron. She could only hope the Harrow’s sensors would detect them as a shipwreck.

Yeah, like defenders have never thought of something like this. If there's enough mass to be a mine, blast it to plasma.