By Rosiee Thor

Mal and company find themselves on the planet Brome…where their payment for a job was in the form of Geese. The problem is they are out of money and almost out of fuel, so they stay on Brome looking for work. But Brome is poor planet. And they do find some work, being contracted to find some missing settlers who may have moved in with the mysterious Governess. But the Blue Sun boss on the planet, Lyle Horne, is a former acquaintance of Shepherd Book. And Book doesn’t want to talk about how they know each other, and neither does Horne. The plan is simple – Inara and Simon will try to convince the Governess they are potential donors while Mal and the rest will infiltrate to look for the missing people, except for an injured Jayne, who will stay with Lyle. From there, a typical series of misadventures and surprises will await them.

Like many of the books in the series this one takes place between episodes of the initial series. So the whole original crew is alive, is together, and is at a point of stasis that we are familiar with. That’s normal for these kind of books, but its annoying. The adventure is quick and fun, good twists and turns, and it fills in a bit of Shepherd Book’s history. And the author does the best job with the characters voices I’ve read that didn’t have Whedon, Minear, Edlund, or Espenson named as the writer or editor. Kudos. It would have made an interesting episode of the show.

288 Pages

4/5