The Ghost Machine

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.

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WHAT'S THE FRONT-INSIDE FLAP SAY?

I'm going to say too little or too much if I try to describe the setup, so I'll just appropriate this from the Book Jacket:

Some hot property

Mal's crew desperately need another payday, but not desperately enough to transport a Blue Sun flightcase to Badger, no questions asked, when the area is swarming with Alliance spacecraft equally keen to regain the stolen property. Yet Jayne refuses to miss out, and sneaks the case aboard Serenity.

Lucid Dreams

Within hours of secreting the case Jayne suddenly finds himself back on the Cobb homestead with his brother Matty miraculously cured of the damplung. Wash is at the controls of the highest-spec cruiser money can buy, the billionaire head of a 'verse-spanning business empire. All of the crew but River are soon immersed in vivid hallucinations of their deepest desires, while their bodies lie insensible on the ship.

Fantasies gone sour

Wash's empire begins to crumble; the Cobb ranch is under attack by merciless bandits. As everyone's daydreams turn nightmare, Serenity floats on a crash course towards a barren moon, with only River standing between the crew and certain oblivion.

THE FIREFLY-NESS OF IT ALL

In this series so far, Lovegrove has walked a tightrope of making enough references to ground this in the television series while just telling good stories in this 'verse and keeping it from being a Ready Player One-esque reference-fest. He does a great job of that here, too—some of the references are so subtle that I had to go back and double-check (and I loved those all the more). It's entirely possible I missed a few of the subtle ones, which bugs me.

At the same time, we've got plenty of Badger, a nice amount of Niska, and some Reavers. Good references to the canon and foreshadowing of the movie. Firefly fans should be well satisfied.

The Niska appearance filled me with dread for what lay ahead—as it should. The way Lovegrove caught me off-guard and left me very happy.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT THE GHOST MACHINE?

I hate the premise. There's just something about it that bugs me—most of the action takes place in dreams, and those stories always seem pointless. Longer-running TV Shows frequently resort to this, and I almost never really like those episodes either.

That said? The execution redeemed the stupid premise. I particularly enjoyed the Simon and Kaylee dreams, and thought the Zoë one was brilliantly done (her nightmare version was the best). I have no complaints about the others, either, but those three stood out. The whole thing felt like a justification for a chance to let River shine—and who's going to complain about that?

I do think that the first couple of chapters seemed to lean too hard into the Firefly patois, to the point of beating the reader over the head with it. But then it settled down, or I acclimated to it. I don't remember having that issue with the first two books in this run, which made it really stand out to me. But other than that, Lovegrove stuck to making me happy to be in this world again.

Like I always say when I read one of this series, I don't know why it takes me so long to get to the next one—I have four more sitting on my TBR-shelves. These books are too much fun to delay reading them.

Ignore the premise, enjoy slipping into the psyches of the characters, and relish a little more time in the Black with the crew of Serenity.

3.5