REVIEW: Salvage

Salvage By Renée Nault 256 pages/Ten Speed Press/$19.99 (sc) Class conflict has powered countless speculative stories, and Salvage uses that familiar tension to frame a near-future romance with an ecological warning beneath the surface. That setup gives Nault plenty of visual and thematic promise, but the book never develops its social divide or ecological premise enough to make the romance feel fully persuasive. A generation or two ago, a cataclysm submerged entire cities. The survivors rebuilt society into two sharply divided worlds: the Uplands, home to the contemporary one percenters, and the Flats, where residents scavenge remnants of the past and sell them in markets to survive. Paolo comes from one of the more successful Flats families, but he would rather devote his time to painting. Instead, his skill as a deep diver keeps pulling him into increasingly dangerous searches for valuable relics. Then Paolo meets Jules, an accomplished sculptor whose privileged circle drifts from one trendy club to another. Her life looks glamorous but hollow, made emptier by an absent film-star mother. Paolo is quickly smitten, seduced by how the other half lives, and he hides his nocturnal ac...