Amber Rose is the overseer (“OC”) of a salvage crew including Simon, a geologist; Anna, a physician, and Milo, an engineer.

Beacon identifies OC and other digitized humans as examples of literary machines based on their ability to write poetry; it wishes to initiate first contact.

Poddar finds that several situations in the novel are analogous to working for modern-day corporations such as Amazon, where workers "are expected match the speed of the computers, making their lives miserable.

According to a review in Strange Horizons, "even when Amber's narration is presented to the reader in natural language, his every interaction with the book's human characters ... conveys the disorienting sense that everything is said via a shout at full volume.

[3] Additionally, the author used a collection of Python scripts "to generate a string of random events in his plot—everything from sudden changes in the weather to disagreements that might arise between the book’s characters".

[2] Gautam Bhatia of Himal Southasian writes that "The Salvage Crew reads like a love letter to science fiction.

Several paragraphs in the novel allude the science fiction works of Joe Haldeman, Ridley Scott, and Philip K. Dick, among others.

Bhatia states that "even non-SF geeks would enjoy [these easter eggs] because it is so clear that Wijeratne is having fun himself – these references are often snuck in as ironic asides, with gentle ribbing of the genre's classics."

Wijeratne does not limit himself to science fiction, also quoting William Shakespeare, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

"[4] Jaideep Unudutri of The Hindu wrote that the novel is "space opera for the gig economy, where the “cost of doing business” is the limitation, not something old-fashioned like the speed of light.

"[3] Umang Poddar of the Mithila Review praised the novel's exploration of capitalism, language games, and artificial intelligences.

Nevertheless, the review states that "despite my problems with the ending, The Salvage Crew does still represent a fascinating experiment by an author deeply invested in probing the basic nature of narrative itself.