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adaora_ble's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fatphobia, Gore, Infidelity, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Grief, Police brutality, Sexual assault, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, War, Physical abuse, Abandonment, Stalking, Torture, Terminal illness, Blood, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Confinement, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Cancer, Classism, Death, Domestic abuse, and Emotional abuse
bashsbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
This books reads like an unreleased Firefly episode. For the fans of the show, this is great - another slice of the characters we all love, out in the Black. It is a little unusual for a novel, but it is at least self-contained. I can tell the authors have much love for the series, too, and I think they write the character interactions well. That said, they lean into the Western aspect of the show in a way that feels MUCH more awkward, gimmicky, and cringeworthy than I remember.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, War, Police brutality, Blood, Grief, and Violence
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Fatphobia, Toxic friendship, Torture, Classism, and Slavery
Minor: Alcohol, Sexual content, Cancer, and Gore
quirkykayleetam's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
This novel is formatted as much like an episode of Firefly as possible, starting and ending with a "voice-over" by the captain himself. In writing however, it gives us a peak into the heads, or point of views, of each of Serenity's crew members separately as the story moves on. This highlights both the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the book. Through its impeccable word choice, the book is able to capture the world and some of the characters of Firefly, particularly Zoe and Mal. However, the novel never goes any further than that, sidelining the characters that it does not know what to do with and sticking so closely to things developed in the original show that it often feels more like a nostalgia trip than new material.
The Good: Zoe and Wash's banter is spot-on. If you know the term "whump," I can tell you that the whump (both physical and emotional) in this novel is well-done. The book does a great job of describing doggedness through guilt, pain, and deprivation, one of the world-building and character-building elements central to the original show. Jayne gets a scene of surprising tenderness while caring for an injured street kid that hints at character development we never really got to see before the show was canceled. We get some seriously fun exploration into Shepherd Book's backstory. One scene between Simon and Kaylee had me clutching my heart. It was as cute and awkward and tender as I remembered their relationship to be.
The Bad: The book is so focused on Malcolm Reynold's kidnapping plight that it seems to have forgotten the crew's original smuggling job as a plot point of its own. It serves only to obfuscate and then to solve the "real story" with no consequences because the screen "fades to black." References to every single other episode are dropped so often that they get annoying, as if the authors could not live with themselves if they left out anyone's favorite Thing from the original. Not only does Jayne wear his "cunning hat" through the entire first part of the book for no good reason, the crew go pass the shop where they got Kaylee's dress, someone calls Mal "Captain Tightpants," Wash's dinosaurs make an appearance and on and on and on. This continues while the novel rarely pops into the heads of Kaylee, Simon, River, or Inara, because its writers cannot pin down their character voices well enough to make their feel authentic.
The Ugly: Firefly aired in 2002. This book came out over 15 years later. Yet, it does nothing to curb any of the racism or sexism inherent in the original series. Zoe "seduces" an Alliance officer out of looking closely at Serenity's travel papers while snickering about his girly Southern name. Book's contact from his alliance days is a corrupt Chinese officer with a generic Asian name. Mal's tragic position and revealed backstory revolve around him being a young lothario fighting with another man over a woman. This novel had plenty of chances to take on cool literary experiments: What would a chapter have looked like from the perspective of Serenity? What would we have seen if we had delved into one of River's nightmarish dreams? It had plenty of chances to say new things about war now relevant in our time: Mal's captor's were clearly sick and starving. The book could have turned this into a commentary on poverty or post-war refugeeism instead of repeating the original show's idea that while a person is reasonable, a mob of people are not, and turning Mal's plight into a personal issue with a singular man.
Can we finally admit that Firefly was memorable because the show took risks and was willing to show moral grayness and instability? No amount of nostalgia will ever come close to that, nor will any repetition of the show that does not fix the systemic issues where it did entire peoples wrong.
The Good: Zoe and Wash's banter is spot-on. If you know the term "whump," I can tell you that the whump (both physical and emotional) in this novel is well-done. The book does a great job of describing doggedness through guilt, pain, and deprivation, one of the world-building and character-building elements central to the original show. Jayne gets a scene of surprising tenderness while caring for an injured street kid that hints at character development we never really got to see before the show was canceled. We get some seriously fun exploration into Shepherd Book's backstory. One scene between Simon and Kaylee had me clutching my heart. It was as cute and awkward and tender as I remembered their relationship to be.
The Bad: The book is so focused on Malcolm Reynold's kidnapping plight that it seems to have forgotten the crew's original smuggling job as a plot point of its own. It serves only to obfuscate and then to solve the "real story" with no consequences because the screen "fades to black." References to every single other episode are dropped so often that they get annoying, as if the authors could not live with themselves if they left out anyone's favorite Thing from the original. Not only does Jayne wear his "cunning hat" through the entire first part of the book for no good reason, the crew go pass the shop where they got Kaylee's dress, someone calls Mal "Captain Tightpants," Wash's dinosaurs make an appearance and on and on and on. This continues while the novel rarely pops into the heads of Kaylee, Simon, River, or Inara, because its writers cannot pin down their character voices well enough to make their feel authentic.
The Ugly: Firefly aired in 2002. This book came out over 15 years later. Yet, it does nothing to curb any of the racism or sexism inherent in the original series. Zoe "seduces" an Alliance officer out of looking closely at Serenity's travel papers while snickering about his girly Southern name. Book's contact from his alliance days is a corrupt Chinese officer with a generic Asian name. Mal's tragic position and revealed backstory revolve around him being a young lothario fighting with another man over a woman. This novel had plenty of chances to take on cool literary experiments: What would a chapter have looked like from the perspective of Serenity? What would we have seen if we had delved into one of River's nightmarish dreams? It had plenty of chances to say new things about war now relevant in our time: Mal's captor's were clearly sick and starving. The book could have turned this into a commentary on poverty or post-war refugeeism instead of repeating the original show's idea that while a person is reasonable, a mob of people are not, and turning Mal's plight into a personal issue with a singular man.
Can we finally admit that Firefly was memorable because the show took risks and was willing to show moral grayness and instability? No amount of nostalgia will ever come close to that, nor will any repetition of the show that does not fix the systemic issues where it did entire peoples wrong.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Gun violence, and War
Moderate: Torture and Death
Minor: Injury/Injury detail
alisonvh's review
adventurous
dark
funny
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This book doesn't have the best writing, but it doesn't have the worst writing either. It's as fun and fast paced as the show and I really enjoyed getting a chance to hang out with these characters again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Violence, and War
Moderate: Torture
silver_valkyrie_reads's review
adventurous
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
The very beginning of this book did not impress me at all. All of the good Whedonesque lines were directly cribbed from the show and just put into different contexts. After a couple chapters it kind of seemed to find it's own footing, have some good dialogue that sounded like the characters without being recycled, and convinced me not to DNF. It took about the half the book though before I was really invested and actually cared much about reading the next chapter.
All that said, in the end it was a decent story, with pretty good Firefly feel, and gave some glimpses into character back story we didn't have before. If you're in a Firefly mood, it's worth a try for sure.
All that said, in the end it was a decent story, with pretty good Firefly feel, and gave some glimpses into character back story we didn't have before. If you're in a Firefly mood, it's worth a try for sure.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence
Minor: Rape and Sexual content
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