A New Firefly Novel from Titan Books = A Shiny Holiday Gift for Any Browncoat
It’s the shiniest time of the year, and just in time for Nick the Saint to come down the chimney and leave presents for all the good little Browncoats (and maybe some who misbehaved in all the right ways) there is a new Firefly novel on the shelves of local bookstores.
Firefly: Aim to Misbehave is the ninth novel in the Firefly series from Titan Books. According to the synopsis on Amazon (which I’m mostly quoting and sometimes paraphrasing here), the novel, which is written by Rosiee Thor, tells a tale that starts with geese. The crew of Serenity is eager to get paid for their latest job, but when payment arrives as a gaggle of geese instead of a purse full of coin, their stay on the planet Brome gets an indefinite extension. It doesn’t much matter that the geese will fetch a pretty penny once they get somewhere to sell them. Without coin, they can’t buy fuel, and without fuel, they can’t get off world. Serenity is stuck.
Luckily, the foreman of the local fuel refinery, Lyle Horne, wants to hire them, but not to work in the factory. He needs their help on a job only a crew like Serenity’s can pull off. Horne is an old friend of Shepherd Book’s. Mal would love to know more about that, but Lyle’s got bigger fish to fry. An authority known as The Governess has been kidnapping his workers, and Lyle wants them back.
The crew needs to break into her fortress of an estate and retrieve the workers. Jayne, who suffered a goose-related injury, stays behind to keep an eye on Horne while the rest of the crew splits up to infiltrate the fortress. However, the Governess has her own story, as do the workers. Is Lyle lying? While they’re trying to make sense of it all, the workers’ children come aboard Serenity with a plan to steal the ship and launch their own rescue mission.
Now, I got to admit, I haven’t read the book yet. My copy is currently sitting on a table next to my reading chair in my office, and I’m looking forward to diving into it between Christmas and New Year’s. I have read the other eight novels in the Titan Books series though, and that’s why I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I know what to expect. If this book is anything like the other Firefly novels that Titan Books has published (and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t be), then what the reader is going to get is a story that feels like a lost episode of the series. So far, all the Titan Books novels have been set during a time that would chronologically occur either during the series itself or between the series and the motion picture, so we get to enjoy having all nine original members of Serenity’s crew involved in the plot. I can also say that the writers Titan Books has brought on board to write these novels have a very good general understanding of the characters and the ‘verse that Joss Whedon created. And that’s not something that Browncoats should take for granted nowadays, as anyone who has read any of the recent Firefly comics from Boom! Studios knows all too well.
During my time as a regular contributor to the blog over at takebackthesky.net, I wrote more detailed reviews of several of the earlier Firefly novels from Titan Books. Those reviews would probably give you a much better idea of what to expect both from this newest book and from the Titan Books novels in general. If you’d like to have a gander at any of those reviews, you can find them here:
And if you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas or Hanukkah gift for a Browncoat on your holiday shopping list, I would venture to say that you’re not likely to go wrong with a copy of Firefly: Aim to Misbehave. The title is currently available from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and might even be on the shelves at your local bookstore or even your local comics shop.
And with that, I’d like to wish the Browncoats of our brigade and all over the ‘verse a very shiny holiday season.
Keep flyin’.
Chris