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A review by sambora
Firefly: What Makes Us Mighty by M.K. England
2.0
This was a rather average Firefly novel in my opinion.
At it's core this is well written book and the characterisation is good, but the plot here is just too ruttin' similar to other books in this series, too similar to episodes of the show.
What Makes Us Mighty had what felt like an overly "safe" plot that didn't do much to expand, or put a twist on, what we all know and love of this series.
Firefly has such a strong combination of Space Opera and Western baked into it's DNA, and I feel as thought if you aren't going to lean heavily on either of those settings (and their associated themes), then you need to do something real weird with it. There have been books in this series that have done that, but this one really didn't.
What Makes Us Mighty felt as though elements of "typical Firefly plotting" were pulled from a hat and thrown together to form a very generic story - in brief; Inara has a client, the entire crew land hoping to have some R&R, Shepherd Book spends most of the book off-screen in an Abbey, the crew were tricked into smuggling something they didn't agree with, Jayne is a cold brute and worries about what he did back on Ariel, a localized civil war breaks out between two factions of the planet thus Zoe and Mal have flashbacks to the war, Kaylee and Wash stay with the ship, Simon does some doctoring and River is... well just River.
It really is rather uninspired. I would love to see more creative ways to use these amazing characters. Memorable adventures that take the members of the cast out of their comfort zone. Or for the story to take us to a world unlike all the others we've seen.
I love Firefly and I am so grateful we are still getting new material, it's just that this didn't feel new.
This all sounds like I hated the book - I didn't. It's ok. As I said before, the writing is good, the pacing was smooth and the character voice, as usual with this series, was really strong... I just really want to see more from these stories and this one felt completely forgettable to me plot-wise, which is a real shame.
2 stars.
Thank you for reading my review!
At it's core this is well written book and the characterisation is good, but the plot here is just too ruttin' similar to other books in this series, too similar to episodes of the show.
What Makes Us Mighty had what felt like an overly "safe" plot that didn't do much to expand, or put a twist on, what we all know and love of this series.
Firefly has such a strong combination of Space Opera and Western baked into it's DNA, and I feel as thought if you aren't going to lean heavily on either of those settings (and their associated themes), then you need to do something real weird with it. There have been books in this series that have done that, but this one really didn't.
What Makes Us Mighty felt as though elements of "typical Firefly plotting" were pulled from a hat and thrown together to form a very generic story - in brief; Inara has a client, the entire crew land hoping to have some R&R, Shepherd Book spends most of the book off-screen in an Abbey, the crew were tricked into smuggling something they didn't agree with, Jayne is a cold brute and worries about what he did back on Ariel, a localized civil war breaks out between two factions of the planet thus Zoe and Mal have flashbacks to the war, Kaylee and Wash stay with the ship, Simon does some doctoring and River is... well just River.
It really is rather uninspired. I would love to see more creative ways to use these amazing characters. Memorable adventures that take the members of the cast out of their comfort zone. Or for the story to take us to a world unlike all the others we've seen.
I love Firefly and I am so grateful we are still getting new material, it's just that this didn't feel new.
This all sounds like I hated the book - I didn't. It's ok. As I said before, the writing is good, the pacing was smooth and the character voice, as usual with this series, was really strong... I just really want to see more from these stories and this one felt completely forgettable to me plot-wise, which is a real shame.
2 stars.
Thank you for reading my review!