Big Damn Hero

I was impressed with this. It had to have been difficult to write a novel about characters from a beloved TV show: fans will have their own ideas how these characters should act and sound, and if that weren’t intimidating enough, the long amount of time that’s passed since the show’s cancellation can only have made things harder. I’m happy to report that Lovegrove pulled it off magnificently! This story gives individual characters their turn in the spotlight, and NO ONE seems out of character. He’s captured their attitudes, their voice, even, in some cases, their mannerisms. A few of the characters even had fuller treatment than they enjoyed in the show, with little snippets of back story here and there to flesh them out.

For show more example, the show hints at a warm relationship between Jayne and his mother; the novel shows a few times when he is thinking about her. It never feels out of place, and it’s always done in a down-to-earth, Jayne-Cobb style. Zoe is as tough as ever, and Mal is just all kinds of wonderful. For me though, the most impressive parts were the sections with Shepherd Book. He is arguably the most mysterious character in the series, and he keeps secrets even from his friends and crew mates. In the show, viewers never get inside his head. In this novel, Lovegrove tells a big chunk of the story from Book’s point of view, and it really works well. He is fleshed out enough to make him seem real as a narrator. He’s relatable. He’s also still mysterious, and his back story, such as it is, is told in such a way that it explains his character’s motivation and his commitment to helping others . . . while conveniently leaving out ALL the specific details about his past. It was brilliantly handled.

The story itself was well-told, and the tension kept building throughout. There was plenty of action, but there was also plenty of room for the characters to just be themselves. It would have been easy for an author to be lazy with regard to the story; some fans would be so happy to see these characters again that the plot itself might have suffered. However, that is certainly not the case here, and plot’s setup and resolution made for an intriguing storyline. The novel felt a bit like an episode of the show, but with more detail (so perhaps a 2-part episode). I’m sure this was intentional, and it worked well. Bonus! Lots of minor characters from the show get mentioned at some point in the story, and the text gives a nod to many of the events of the series. This was a must-read for any fans of Firefly. I don’t know whether it would be enjoyable even for people who haven’t seen the show, but I hope so. You DON’T have to have seen Serenity to enjoy it. An exciting space Western that lives up to the show. show less

I love Firefly. Unfortunately, this was a pretty paint-by-numbers affair, with weak characterization and indifferent writing. Scratches the nostalgia itch, to be sure, and if you keep your expectations low you can just enjoy spending more time with your favorite characters. But it has none of the crackling wit and just plain fun of the show.

Ahh Firefly... the short lived show that is forever in my heart and my two black cats are named after Mal and Wash. I absolutely loved this story and happy I can continue reading adventures of the Serenity crew. We find out more about Malcolm's past that catches up with him, River's weird things, Shepherd's fuzzy past and of course Jayne's machoness (I miss that the most!). All in all a great read that I couldn't put down. Looking forward to reading more stories in this genre.

Every time I think about the ill-fated TV show Firefly, or hear it mentioned, I can’t avoid a combined feeling of sadness and irritation, the former for the untimely demise of a very promising story, and the latter for the short-sightedness of the network executives responsible for that decision – a situation all too common in the unfathomable world of television, and whose lack of wisdom is stressed by the huge success that the short run of 14 episodes and the 2005 feature movie Serenity are still enjoying today, a long time after the cancellation.

For this reason, any opportunity to enjoy new stories focused on the crew of the ship Serenity is still welcome, so that when I learned of the publication of this book I made it a point show more to check it out as soon as I could, despite a few misgivings: over the years I had tried some fan-written stories, but I was never lucky enough to find any that truly could bring the old ‘magic’ back, so I approached Big Damn Hero with some trepidation. Well, as it turned out I should not have worried, because this novel is the closest I ever came to the true spirit of the TV show and its characters.

Shiny! :-)

The story starts more or less where the last episode of Firefly left off, which is a double bonus, since it works as a continuation of the show and allows me to avoid dealing with the painful losses suffered by the crew in the movie Serenity: the old gang’s all here, and they are a sight for sore eyes… Of course they are in trouble, but that’s nothing new: with finances at an all-time low, and with the ship needing constant repairs, Captain Reynolds must accept a cargo from the disreputable Badger, the crafty boss of Persephone’s criminal underworld. This time the shipment carries an added problem, since it consists of several crates of highly volatile explosives, destined to a mining operation, which must be delivered in a short time frame, or they might blow up in transit. In an attempt to kill two birds with a stone, Mal also takes on another commission, an apparently easy task whose destination lies on the same course as the main job – and since in this part of the ‘verse “easy” often equates with “tricky”, the meeting with the mysterious client ends up with Reynolds being attacked, kidnapped, and taken off-planet for destination unknown.

What follows is a fast story running on parallel tracks: the crew must deal with the dangerous shipment and take it to destination before it – and Serenity – are blown to smithereens, while trying to find out what happened to their Captain, the only certainty being that he’s in danger and that time is of the essence. Meanwhile, the Alliance is on their tracks, again, searching for their two most-wanted passengers, Simon and his disturbed sister River, and tempers aboard ship are becoming as volatile as the explosives in the cargo bay. As these threads develop, we discover some interesting details about Malcom Reynolds’ past and that of Shepherd Book, one of the most mysterious members of Serenity’s crew, while we renew our acquaintance with each one of the characters we learned to appreciate and love in the past, as every one of them enjoys some screen time.

Zöe gets indeed the lion’s share of the focus here, and it’s a narrative choice I greatly appreciated since she’s always been my favorite character: if on the show she distinguished herself for her no-nonsense attitude and short, caustic utterances, here we are able to get into her mind and see what makes her tick. Her unfailing loyalty to Mal plays as a nice counterpoint to Jayne’s selfishness and matter-of-fact acceptance of the possible loss of their captain, and it’s in the interactions between the two of them that I found the true spirit of Firefly in this book. The brisk pace of the novel does not permit the same level of depth for the other members of the crew, although there are a few moments in which River’s uncanny powers play a significant role and we can perceive the hidden layers of her formidable but deranged mind, and in those moments I could very easily hear her voice and its peculiar cadence. The true discovery in Big Damn Hero is reserved for Shepherd Book however, and the hints (too few, granted, but better than the continuing mystery) about his more… energetic past: it’s interesting to see him in a more active role and I liked how he was able to balance the compassion required by his calling with the ability to meet physical threats.

The “meat” of the story, though, comes from Reynolds’ abduction and the reasons at the root of it: these reach far into his past and focus on his youth and the later war experiences, giving the readers a chance to witness some of the events that molded him into the present individual. This thread also takes a closer look at what it means to be a former Browncoat in a world now firmly ruled by the victorious Alliance, and how the bitterness of that defeat can still prey on the minds of those who lost the fight – sometimes with toxic effects. Another interesting side of this narrative theme comes from the fact that the crew is forced to scatter in different directions, as some of them try to fulfill their job and others need to stay and investigate Mal’s disappearance: the main strength of Serenity’s complement comes from their being an actual family, and the lack of one member – especially the pivotal Captain Reynolds who is their glue – deeply unsettles them, besides being a source of deep worry for his safety. I was reminded in several instances of one of my favorite episodes, Out of Gas, where a life support malfunction forced them to abandon ship leaving Mal alone aboard as he tried to restore the systems: as it happened in that episode, the crew’s separation mines their confidence and for a while makes them unable to effectively react to the situation at hand. But once they do, their synergy is a joy to behold…

Big Damn Hero might not be a perfect novel, since it sports some quirks and weaknesses, but they are negligible when compared with the sheer joy of being immersed once again in this ‘verse and meeting again these beloved characters. A joy I expect to renew with the next book in this welcome revival series. show less

I kind of can't believe how much I disliked this book.

I will admit to being a huge Firefly/Serenity fan, so perhaps my expectations were too high. But this story felt like a pastiche, with familiar names and places jumbled together. I get the impulse to want to use elements that fans are comfortable with (Badger! Persephone! The store where Kaylee's dress came from! Jayne's hat!), but this story added nothing to the universe. It felt so rehashed I legitimately think it might possible to do this story as an episode simply by cutting and pasting together clips from the existing show and movie.

The writing is stilted ("[Inara] tried to think of a word to encapsulate how she personally felt about him. She didn’t know if there was one. show more What was going on between her and Mal was too complicated for a single descriptor. It was a tangled knot of inhibitions and unspoken emotions which they themselves might never get around to unraveling."), and while I know a lot of the character work on the show was nonvocal, there are subtler ways to deal with such things in literature.

If you're looking for new adventures of Serenity, I highly recommend Stephen Brust's unauthorized novel, "My Own Kind of Freedom." Though it's technically non-canon and only fan fiction, it's a much more honest telling of a story in the Firefly universe. I hope the other planned novels take their cues from it rather than this. show less

Interesting story, good characterizations of the crew and Badger. The final reveal seemed a bit iffy, but overall a good ensemble tale set somewhere in the middle of the series.
The writer tried a little hard to link everything to incidents from the series and some callback seemed forced, but others were fun. I guess it's down to personal taste (and how long it's been since you've watched the episodes).
Some flashbacks concerned Mal's younger days on Shadow and I wonder if these are considered "canon"; perhaps it really doesn't matter anymore.
Still, a fun read and more Firefly is (almost) always welcome.

Gaming the book:
The Firefly Adventures: Brigands and Browncoats is a board game that allows you to play the crew of the Serenity in some show more planet-side escapades. You have 2 versions of each character, one "casual" and one "heroic" (with better abilities). While you're casual, you can walk right past guards, etc. but once you start misbehaving, they get all aggressive and you flip to the heroic side (and swap miniatures) to shoot your way out. The boxes that hold the game components are the buildings that you use to create the setting and a number of scenarios are provided. Expansions add the rest of the crew and additional scenarios. This game uses a similar conflict system to Firefly: The Game, which focuses on shipboard activities in The 'Verse. show less

Anything that tells more Firefly tales is always going to have me look towards it with a charitable and generous spirit. If one is looking purely at the dialogue, Lovegrove writes admirably - at its best one could easily imagine 90% of it fitting in well with the show. It's the sections between the dialogue which can be a bit problematic - Firefly has a certain cadence, a rhythm, a vocabulary - and it's a bit jarring when the dialogue embraces those conventions, but the surrounding explanatory text is largely written like any other piece of fiction, it very much feels like a lost opportunity.

The plot itself is merely ok - it takes place sometime between the series and the film, and with that knowledge it unfortunately eliminates most of show more the tension - as a reader we know Mal is never truly in any danger. There's some effort to add a few more shades of grey in the portrayal of the alliance & independents, which hits as often as it misses. The end is wrapped up a little too quickly and neatly, and our crew aren't really given much in the way of opportunity to reflect on the events of the novel. On the otherhand, it's a true delight to have them all together again, even if only in book form - I don't think I can in good conscience rate it less than 4 stars on that point alone! show less