Tag: James Lovegrove

DETAILS:
Series: Firefly, #3
Publisher: Titan Books
Publication Date: May 4, 2021
Format: Hardcover
Length: 334 pg.
Read Date: August 24-25, 2022

What’s the Front-Inside Flap Say?

I’m going to say too little or too much if I try to describe the setup, so I’ll just appropriate this from the Book Jacket:

Some hot property
Mal’s crew desperately need another payday, but not desperately enough to transport a Blue Sun flightcase to Badger, no questions asked, when the area is swarming with Alliance spacecraft equally keen to regain the stolen property. Yet Jayne refuses to miss out, and sneaks the case aboard Serenity.

Lucid Dreams
Within hours of secreting the case Jayne suddenly finds himself back on the Cobb homestead with his brother Matty miraculously cured of the damplung. Wash is at the controls of the highest-spec cruiser money can buy, the billionaire head of a ‘verse-spanning business empire. All of the crew but River are soon immersed in vivid hallucinations of their deepest desires, while their bodies lie insensible on the ship.

Fantasies gone sour
Wash’s empire begins to crumble; the Cobb ranch is under attack by merciless bandits. As everyone’s daydreams turn nightmare, Serenity floats on a crash course towards a barren moon, with only River standing between the crew and certain oblivion.

The Firefly-ness of it All

In this series so far, Lovegrove has walked a tightrope of making enough references to ground this in the television series while just telling good stories in this ‘verse and keeping it from being a Ready Player One-esque reference-fest. He does a great job of that here, too—some of the references are so subtle that I had to go back and double-check (and I loved those all the more). It’s entirely possible I missed a few of the subtle ones, which bugs me.

At the same time, we’ve got plenty of Badger, a nice amount of Niska, and some Reavers. Good references to the canon and foreshadowing of the movie. Firefly fans should be well satisfied.

The Niska appearance filled me with dread for what lay ahead—as it should. The way Lovegrove caught me off-guard and left me very happy.

So, what did I think about The Ghost Machine?

I hate the premise. There’s just something about it that bugs me—most of the action takes place in dreams, and those stories always seem pointless. Longer-running TV Shows frequently resort to this, and I almost never really like those episodes either.

That said? The execution redeemed the stupid premise. I particularly enjoyed the Simon and Kaylee dreams, and thought the Zoë one was brilliantly done (her nightmare version was the best). I have no complaints about the others, either, but those three stood out. The whole thing felt like a justification for a chance to let River shine—and who’s going to complain about that?

I do think that the first couple of chapters seemed to lean too hard into the Firefly patois, to the point of beating the reader over the head with it. But then it settled down, or I acclimated to it. I don’t remember having that issue with the first two books in this run, which made it really stand out to me. But other than that, Lovegrove stuck to making me happy to be in this world again.

Like I always say when I read one of this series, I don’t know why it takes me so long to get to the next one—I have four more sitting on my TBR-shelves. These books are too much fun to delay reading them.

Ignore the premise, enjoy slipping into the psyches of the characters, and relish a little more time in the Black with the crew of Serenity.

3 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, the opinions expressed are my own.

Firefly: The Magnificent Nine by James Lovegrove: The Hero of Canton Lives!

By HCNewton

On August 12, 2021

In Fiction, Science Fiction

I could go on for a long time about all sorts of details about this book while still avoiding spoilers, but I’m going to force myself to be brief. However long this ends up being, just know, it’s probably about 1/4-1/3 the length I wanted it to go.

Firefly: The Magnificent Nine

by James Lovegrove
Series: Firefly, #2

Hardcover, 384 pg.
Titan Books, 2019

Read: July 27-28, 2021
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

“If” he said, and he repeated the word for emphasis, “if I go along with this entirely hare-brained idea, which’ll most likely end up gettin’ us all killed, Jayne’ll be in my debt.”

“That he surely will.”

“And I’ll have this to rub his nose in for months to come.”

“Again, yes.”

Mal crooked one corner of his mouth. “Then what the heck? I’m in. Just tell me this: when did a shipload of criminals, desperadoes, and fugitives become such a bunch of do-gooders?”

Inara had the answer. “When their captain showed them how.”

What’s The Magnificent Nine About?

Fourteen years ago, Temperance Jones walked out of Jayne Cobb’s life without warning. They’d been partners in crime for some time—and in a few other ways, too. Now, while Serenity and her crew are between jobs, Temperance (now using McCloud as a last name) sends Jayne a message—her town’s water supply is being held hostage by a local gang called the Scourers. If they aren’t stopped, her small town, like many others on the planet already—will fall to this group and what little water they have will come at too steep a price.

Mal’s not interested in helping, but the rest of the crew remembers how not long ago, they did something similar for Inara’s friend Nandi—and that went okay, right? (well, eventually). So they convince the Captain that this is the right thing to do.

It was probably when Wash almost didn’t out-maneuver a heat-seeking missile—which still resulted in Serenity being disabled for days—that everyone realized that this was going to be harder than defending Nandi’s ranch. But now, they had to find some way to stop the Scourers to save Temperance’s town and their own lives.

Oh, and somewhere along the way, someone needs to do some thinking about why the not-quite-fourteen-year-old daughter of Temperance is named Jane.

Random Observations

I’m not going to let myself fully geek out about this book, but some of the highlights and/or things I’d like to spend a lot of time discussing include:
bullet River got to talk to more cows!
bullet Shepherd Book’s Christianity was a little more pronounced than I’m used to (and they actually explicitly called it “Christianity”–it was always clear that’s what it was, but no one ever used the C-word in the show/movie)
bullet While trying to fly the ship away from the missile, Wash remembered the words of “his Zen Buddhist flight instructor”: You are a leaf on the wind. I almost threw the book away at that point, why do that to me?
bullet River defended Serenity using blades and guns—and was (again) the hero of the moment.
bullet Wash and Zoë have some great moments together. Zoë has some pretty good moments that have nothing to do with Wash, too.
bullet The Chapter titles (one of those things I never pay enough attention to) are even pretty fun: “The Inevitable Bar Brawl” and “Landmines of an Improvised and Somewhat Homespun Nature,” for example.
bullet Jayne described talking to River as “a radio and the signal keeps hopping, changing channels at random.” Hard to beat that.

So, what did I think about The Magnificent Nine?

This is just so much fun. Lovegrove captures the feel of the show and the voices of the characters so, so, so well that it’s impossible not to enjoy the book if you liked Firefly.

Is there anything else to say, really? This was a satisfying, entertaining, and nostalgic ride with Serenity, with the bonus of getting some good focus on Jayne Cobb—and maybe seeing him in a better light than you’d be tempted to otherwise.

3.5 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

Firefly: Big Damn Hero by Nancy Holder, James Lovegrove: Take me back out to the black

By HCNewton

On June 17, 2019

In Fiction

Firefly: Big Damn Hero

by Nancy Holder, James Lovegrove
Series: Firefly, #1

Hardcover, 334 pg.
Titan Books, 2018

Read: May 13, 2019

Inara gets these faraway looks — don’t know what t means, but I know not to ask. Still got the Tams on board, and Jayne hasn’t tried to sell ’em out since we got those medical supplies on Osiris, so that’s a plus. Shepherd’s sill reading his book of fairytales. Zoë’s still my first officer, and I wouldn’t have any other. Kaylee keeps us running, and Wash keeps us flying.

Is it a good life or a bad one? The answer doesn’t matter.

It’s the only life we have.

I was a fan of Firefly from the first episode that FOX aired — and was crushed by the cancellation. Serenity was a great send-off for the characters, but like for so many, I wanted more. However, for reasons I don’t understand, I haven’t read any of the comics that came out after (which bothers me). Maybe I was just trying to move on — aside from the bi-annual (or so) rewatch of the series and movie. But when I saw that Titan Books was going to be doing a series of novels, I had to give them a shot. And then let it sit on my shelf for months.

Whoops. That was a mistake that I’m glad I rectified.

Before I talk about the novel, I’ve got to say that this is probably the nicest tie-in novel I own. It’s just a high-quality production, from cover to printing, to ribbon bookmark.

Sometime between “Heart of Gold” and “Objects in Space,” the crew finds themselves on Persephone picking up some cargo to make a run for Badger. In the chaos that ensues during a bar fight, Mal is kidnapped and Zoë and Jayne can’t find a trace of him anywhere. With a clock ticking on the delivery, the crew decides they have no choice but to deliver Badger’s goods, even with Mal in danger. Book stays behind to see what he can discover.

What he finds is evidence that Mal’s been taken by a group of Browncoat vets still embittered by their loss to the Alliance. They’ve got a little track record of finding “traitors” to the cause, trying them in a kangaroo court and executing them. The ringleader of this group seems to have a particular hatred for Malcolm Reynolds and it doesn’t seem that Mal’s got long before he’s convicted and executed.

Meanwhile, Mal’s trying to make sense of what’s happening to him and takes a trip down memory lane, going back to his childhood/early adolescence and reliving the days at home leading up to signing up with the army for the Independent cause. What we see is an immature Mal, with very little to tie him to the man he is — the same mouth, certainly, and a little bit of the same style. But it’s the war that turn him into the man that we all know and love.

Shepherd Book gets a nice little adventure on his own, able to use an old contact of his to extract information about what might have happened to Mal that Zoe and the rest can’t get. Inara gets a moment or two to shine, as does just about everyone else. Zoë gets the spotlight thoughout (as she never quite got in the show, sadly), which was great. River’s . . . River-ness(?) was on full display and was great. A lot of care was show in getting the characters — all of them, either the crew or otherwise — just right. And they did a great job of that.

It was a lot of fun exploring Mal’s roots. I’m not sure what kind of background I’d imagine him having, but it wasn’t this one. I could’ve bought another childhood/adolescence for Captain Tightpants, but this works just as well. Watching it come back to bite him seems fitting, really.

I wasn’t crazy about the end — the way that the crew left things with the kidnappers seemed a bit harsh. But the ‘Verse they fly in is a harsh one, and sometimes you have to let things be rough. So I’m not going to complain too much, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Will this work for people who didn’t like the show? No — well, probably not. But why would they be picking up the book? Will it convince anyone not familiar with the show that this is a universe they want to spend more time in? Mayyyyybe. Will those people enjoy the novel? Same answer. Will this help fill the void that the premature cancellation left in the hearts of so many fans? Yes. It’ll also get them asking for more — this is a fanbase that doesn’t seem to understand the concept of satiation. I know when it comes to these stories, I don’t.

It’s a very satisfying story, exciting, capturing the feel of the show and the characters. I loved getting to spend more time with these people and I hope Titan gives us several more books.

—–

4 Stars