Salvage (Jennifer Mills, Picador)

In Salvage, Jennifer Mills (The Airways, Dyschronia) weaves a haunting, speculative tale of two sisters navigating the fallout of a fractured world. Jude, rootless and always on the move, once lived a life of privilege after being adopted into a wealthy family. Her sister, Celeste, by contrast, now drifts through space on a station built for the ultra-rich to escape Earth’s collapse – a project masterminded by the richest man in the southern hemisphere. As climate disaster and war reshape the planet, the sisters’ paths diverge until fate, or something like it, brings them back together. The narrative moves through fragments – ‘Before’, ‘Station’, ‘August’ and ‘November’ – gradually assembling the pieces of Jude and Celeste’s lives. Mills’ prose is pared back, lyrical, and at times almost dreamlike. This works especially well in Celeste’s space-bound chapters, where disorientation and isolation blur the lines of reality. Salvage is an ambitious novel that blends dystopian fiction with intimate storytelling. The emotional core of the book lies in the sisters’ bond and Jude’s search for a sense of belonging in a broken world. While the book’s scope is vast, touching on identity, survival and climate collapse, it retains a deeply human focus. For readers curious about speculative fiction but drawn to character-driven narratives, Salvage is an absorbing and quietly powerful read. The worldbuilding is eerie and convincing, especially as the story escalates toward its unsettling, futuristic climax.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Jess Lomas is reviews editor for Books+Publishing. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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