[Dragaera] My Own Kind Of Freedom

[Philip Hart]

Anyone here who hasn't read it ought to:
http://dreamcafe.com/firefly.html

It's free (though I hit the donate button a little because I enjoyed it)
and it's SKZB.  The Firefly genre elements are certainly omnipresent 
but everything the reader needs to know is clear (I've seen a couple of
episodes and the movie but didn't have to know even that much).


Spoilers for _MOKoF_:






So what's SKZBian about the novel?  Well, it's engaging, and the 
characters are drawn distinctly, and the dialogue is crisp, and
the writing is excellent in a let's-not-get-in-the-way way.  (On 
the latter point there was an amusing little flourish I noticed
when the omniscient viewpoint describes something as a looking 'like
something that xes waiting to x', a formulation later [or, well,
earlier] is echoed by one of the characters in reverse, leading to 
interesting meta-speculation that's probably just a funny subtle joke.
That character has "wide shoulders for his frame, giving him a sort of 
scarecrow appearance.")  The plot is full of incident without being
crowded and builds to a nice complex climax.  [I have an issue with 
the place of one of the characters in the plot, but that's the Firefly
universe's fault.  Ditto the random interjections in Chinese.] 
There's a nice characteristic moment which I can't now refind in
which character A notices that character B isn't concerned about
something, and he trusts her, so he doesn't worry - anyway it
worked very well, as do many small-scale things.  There may be
some larger-scale stuff going on related to the chapter titles
but I don't tend to be good about picking up on titles, so that's
something to look out for.

Anyway, check it out, I'd be interested in hearing what others
here thought of the novel.