Published April 7, 2010 by Dark Horse Books.
Not as long as the other Serenity Dark Horse comics entries, but a nice stand-alone tale that gets a bit more complex as time goes on. When in the film, Shepherd Book said, "I wasn't BORN a shepherd, Mal,"... lets just say this book fills in a lot of the space between (hee hee). Interesting character study; just wish there was a LOT more.
Shepherd Book's backstory, finally told through this graphic novel. For fans of 'Firefly', that's really all you need to know.
It's a must read for Firefly fans, but it also left me feeling oddly unsatisfied. Perhaps that's simply because I'd have loved so much to have this story unfold through the TV series, as it should have been. Also, Book's story turned out to be not what I had expected, and I think I was a little disappointed by that.
All that said, however, it's a very good backstory, and it seemed to me to fit in just fine with what we know of Book from the TV series and film. If you want to learn the answers to the mystery of who Book was before he was a Shepherd, and you're not diametrically opposed to reading 'comics', then you should read this.
I'm so glad I read this one, it shards so much light on the secretive Shepherd Book. I finally feel like I know more about his life and his reasoning for everything. The shepherd is wonderfully flawed and complex character and it was so thrilling to find out his secrets. Now I’ve read all the serenity graphic novels I really need to watch the TV show again.
Disappointing story; inconsistent with the series; and the narrative gimmick didn't work for me.
