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Stephen Brust's "My Own Kind of Freedom"

Stephen Brust, author of two dozen novels or so, including the long running Dragaera series that includes the Vlad Taltos novels, has written a novel that's a Firefly fanfic. If you're a Brust fan and a Firefly fan you must read this. If you're a Brust fan but not a Firefly fan you should probably skip this. If you're a Firefly fan but have no idea who Brust is, you should pretend it says Joss Whedon or Keith DeCandido (who did a good job on the Serenity novelization, I thought) and read this.

The story occurs after the series as it appears on DVD, but before the events of the film. Inara and Book have already left the ship. Whedon had envisioned several seasons worth of stories like this one occuring, so there's plenty of room. Brust manages to capture the rhythm of dialog, and the internal motivations of the characters. Maybe I'm just bringing that with me, but he manages not to jar my expectations.

Many of the episodes were quality TV in that you could evaluate them not as individual works, but in their importance to the series. This novel isn't a 10.0 on that scale, but it establishes some good material for Mal, and deepens his character considerably. It also also establishes that the crew trust and follow Mal, but they do no idolize him and will disobey when they think he's wrong.

Also, Brust provides plenty of geek-out fodder, throwing in details and trivia as dialog.

What the heck, it's free. Download and enjoy.

2008.02.20 at 12:00am EST

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