James Griffin-Mars is a chronman, sent back in time from an ecologically ruined future Earth to salvage what technology he can to aid humanity's survival on the planet.
The job is so harrowing that few chronmen make it to old age--the past is full of dangers. James is a rarity, a time traveler past his prime. His experience makes him valuable; his alcoholism and burnout makes him a liability.
One final mission calls into question all his assumptions about the job, his employer and the corporations that foot the bill. The Time Laws, assumed to be for the safety of both chronmen and the timestream, may not be immutable laws of the physical universe after all, as James finds out when he breaks the cardinal rule and brings Elise Kim, a young environmental scientist from the past, into the present.
The pair end up collaborating with an undeveloped yet intelligent tribe of people who live in the wild lands outside of heavily guarded cities. The group hopes to build a better life and perhaps even find the key to restoring the Earth to its former unpolluted state, with the help of another woman from the past and the inventor of time travel, Grace Priestly.
Time Salvager by Wesley Chu (The Lives of Tao) is a gripping story set in an all-too-imaginable far future with time travel a mundane fact of human existence. It's a depiction of the haves, the have-nots and the soulless corporations who rule over them all from space habitats far above the doomed planet. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor