Reviews

From the first chapter I was thinking - this is about as close to a continuation of Firefly as I’m going to get - and I don’t think I was at wrong. True, in the place of a callous empire, we have a complicated and tangled political web laying the backdrop to our adventures with the true heartless villainy coming instead from soulless corporations ( as we lefties recognize to be true from our own world ) but it’s in the central four space crew that we see the Firefly ethos play out. There’s a splendid, multicultural no-nonsense Zoe, an idealistic but hardened captain, a loutish muscle and even a humourous pilot. It’s in the company of Holden and his crew that most of the joy of this book is to be found. They live in the extreme, unforgiving outback of space and a ruthless capitalist system in the Solar System we inhabit but one which is continually evolving into something unrecognizable.

“Corey” was planning for this world to be an RPG universe before “Corey” suggested it would make a good backdrop to a novel. You can feel the pens of two experienced RPG players scratching away as the book is mostly split between the points of view of Holden and a hard-boiled detective figure each making ethical choices and traveling from setpiece to setpiece like players in a vast game. I found this appealing but also felt that some of the major turns in the plot were a little forced and i was more surprised than anyone when I found out at the end that the story was supposed to have taken place over the course of a year. Maybe it didn’t feel that way because I devoured it in two sittings.

I’ll definitely be returning to this series. I felt the book showed it’s state as the product of two writers developing their world, developing their work-style, developing their collaboration but it was far more engaging than many clunky first novels in a series are and I think they’ll definitely relax into their rhythms in future volumes. I just hope there’s less ham-fisted references to whores every few minutes. Definite male-gaze stuff going on, and nerdy, inexperienced males at that. Join us in the future pals.

chrisgordon65's review against another edition

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5.0

There's a lot of space opera coming out now but a lot of it is crap. This wasn't. I picked this up to get ahead of the TV series based on it and I'm really. For me the two things that I enjoyed most was that:

(1) in a stark change to the many galaxy spanning but poorly realised empires, Corey provided a sci-fi world restricted to our solar system, but his world still seemed huge. Once you eliminate faster than light travel and restrict yourself to vaguely realistic space travel speeds your left with a pretty big place. Corey has also created logical characteristics for his three broad groups... old money Earth, the bigger and brassier Mars... and everyone else who is much further away... the belters... who don't just suspect, they KNOW those closer to the sun (or further down the gravity well as they word it) regard them as lesser beings. And living in lower G's has gradually modified their bodies so that the inner planets actually SEE them as different.

(2) with or without the sci-fi background, this has a strong whodunnit at it's core... an engrossing yarn peopled with well-rendered likeable if imperfect characters.

If I was comparing this against some of the space opera I grew up with... it is not as epic, but is better written than the Lensman series and it delivers on the potential that Asimov's old "Lucky Starr" solar system based adventures didn't quite achieve.

I'm very keen to see how this series pans out. Top notch.