Salvaged

Starred review from July 29, 2019
This taut thriller/mystery from Roux, best known for YA horror (House of Furies, etc.), pits a girl on the run from her past against a parasitic monster named Mother. In a spacefaring future, Rosalyn Devar is a xenobiologist who takes a job as a salvager—janitor of dead space crews—to get away from her father, his business, and the man who hurt her. When caught drinking on the job, she’s given one more chance: clean up the Brigantine, a research ship whose crew is dead. But they aren’t. Aboard the Brigantine, she meets Edison Aries, the captain, and his undead crew. They are infected with a mysterious fungus, Foxfire, that has taken root in their minds, convincing them that it is their mother and that Rosalyn needs to join them. Stranded aboard the Brigantine, Rosalyn and Edison try to outwit the other crew members and Mother, while looking for a way to stop Foxfire from spreading and wondering whether her father’s business is behind Foxfire and other horrors. Scenes of violence are gory but not gratuitous, and Roux will leave readers wondering whether the real source of evil is in human minds and hearts. This entertaining, deeply disturbing, and clever story hits all the right notes for those who like a little horror with their SF. Agent: Kate McKean, Howard Morhaim Literary.

September 1, 2019
Put Charlie Huston's The Mystic Art of Erasing All Kinds of Death, Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, and the original Alien movie in a blender, water the mix down, and you'll have this sci-fi thriller. After her personal and professional lives melt down, talented biochemist Rosalyn Devar leaves Earth for a less-than-glamorous career as a salvager; essentially a janitor cleaning up bodies after traumatic incidents. Her drinking and erratic behavior almost get her fired, but she manages to wangle one last assignment: cleaning up the research ship Brigantine, the latest vessel to mysteriously experience the deaths of all its crew. Or so she thinks until she gets there and discovers that most of the crew is alive but infected by Foxfire, a sentient and weirdly maternal blue fungus that wants Rosalyn to join its hive mind and help "her" take over the rest of humanity. Rosalyn must fight off the ship's brutal and crazed security detail, Piero, and biochemist, Rayan, both of whom have succumbed to Foxfire, while wondering if she can trust the engineer, Misato, and the charming captain, Edison, who are desperately attempting to resist Foxfire's influence. Can Rosalyn avoid becoming invaded, get help without endangering anyone else, and find the link between Foxfire and a potential multicorporation conspiracy that might include her own family's company? The answers aren't much in doubt, and the conspiracy proves to be not too terribly complicated; either the author (Tomb of Ancients, 2019) trusts readers to fill in the details or just couldn't be bothered to take on the job herself. And it's odd that Rosalyn, a former biochemist with a specialty in xenobiology, offers no real scientific speculations about Foxfire, leaving that to other characters; she does eventually come up with a way of combating the thing, but there's no explanation of how she developed it, suggesting that the author didn't do much mushroom research of her own, either. Rosalyn is much more interesting as a troubled janitor than she is as a thriller heroine, and the tenuous attraction between her and Edison seems contrived. A story about her cleanup work could've been interesting, but the book heads toward the formulaic territory of alien threats and corrupt corporate shenanigans far too quickly. Moderately entertaining at best.

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October 1, 2019
Rosalyn Devar, fleeing her old life and her old job, now works as a salvager, cleaning up after a variety of messes. The Brigantine is a research ship that's gone dark, which means the crew is dead. When she and her pilot arrive, though, things quickly go bad. The crew isn't dead, they're just infected with a weird, bioluminescent, fungal organism. Some of them are fighting it, the captain most successfully, but the organism wants desperately to survive and spread. Rosalyn, trapped onboard, makes a deal with Captain Aries to work together to warn the rest of humanity. The outlines of Rosalyn's recent history become clear as they discover more about the organism, its origins, and the true extent of its threat. The larger world of the novel is only hinted at as Rosalyn's background is revealed, but the setting is a sound enough framework for this solid piece of survival horror in space. The tension and desperation of the situation meshes perfectly with the characters' development as they struggle to stay themselves and survive.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)