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This truly astonishing commemoration of the television show, its production crew, its infamous actors and much, much more all illustrated and documented in a massive, beautiful hardcover loaded with backstage photographs, unique content, interviews, and even more. Much of the book is in fact a complete transcript of every episode with trivia and creator comments as well as dedicated content for all the actors. Traversing all the amazing documentation this book has to offer will have fans falling in love with Firefly all over again.

Other than the show and movie, this is the first must-own entry to the Firefly franchise for any loving fan. It is nearly overwhelming with content spanning over 500 pages. There is a lot of input from the writers, producers, art and prop directors, actor interviews, and more. This must have taken a tremendous endeavour to assemble all into one book. Even the work done by the people who made Firefly amount to a delightful story in itself; could anything less be expected from this icon of sci-fi?

Note that the only omission in this collection is any material from the Serenity film. The book was published after both the TV show and the movie were released, so I can only imagine it was a conflict with licencing and obtaining rights to include material from Serenity. I can't fathom any other reason not to include it here.

This book is a work of art. Every page is beautifully crafted, decorated, and arranged. It covers the Firefly ship itself, covering its history and design, explained in the form of a tour with all the characters from its crew introducing and commenting on every aspect much like one would experience a guided tour around the ship were this a genuine place to explore.

This book is littered with little notes in the margins and scribbles all over as if the crew had a chance to amend or comment on anything after the initial draft had been written. A very loving touch and quite humourous. This is definitely cool for gaining much insight to the ship itself and its features as well as its design, and truly remarkable to see the whole set of blueprints defining literally the entire ship in full detail.

It tries to convey Serenity as a character itself and even if the introspection of the vessel is not appealing in itself, it's at least worth a read just to see all the hilarious commentary left behind by all of the crew page after page.

I'm impressed by the amount of detail, the quality of its presentation, and the love that went into assembling this text.

While some of the books in the Babylon 5 novel series might not be tremendously stellar, like actual episodes across all 5 seasons of the show, there is so much to enjoy with some stories shining more brightly than others. Luckily, authors are capturing the show's characters so well with their writing. One can almost hear the actors' voices again when reading dialogue creating the immersive atmosphere of conflict the show had done with remarkable proficiency which surely secured its position in sci-fi history.

Sheridan bears a lot of the stress in this plot as he is seen torn apart by his loyalty to the government he serves and his loyalty to his respect for life, morality, and rightousness. There was plenty to enjoy among the chapters involving the variety of crew of Babylon 5, particularly Garibaldi come to think of it, having a rather amusing subplot for him in this one.

The ending to the book was a tremendous reward reflecting that clever problem solving that was written for Sheridan in the original show. It further reinforced the authenticity of the book's quality of representing the overall plot and all its vividly rich characters. This book, like the others, has a healthy pace and was difficult to put down.

Let's get one thing out of the way: this "save the town" trope is now used for the third consecutive book, and while, yes, it is absolutely believable, yes, it is absolutely exactly the sort of thing that will happen to Serenity and her crew, it doesn't mean every episode would amount to that same idea ad nauseum. At the time of writing this is the latest published entry to the series, and hopefully, a 9th book is coming and will be more fresh with its plot and premise. Comparing to previous books does not really affect the rating this book deserves, so this shall be set aside.

This book surprisingly uses a lot of first-person storytelling. The new character interacting with the Serenity crew has entire chapters written from her perspective. Sometimes it feels like a diary, but it's really just a perspective shift. When chapters break focus away from her (Annie Roberts), the writing uses the expected natural flow. This is not a criticism but merely an observation, as it was a unique trait this novel exhibited. Initially I wasn't sure what to think of it, but after having read the novel, it was a nice touch and functioned well, integrating with the rest of the book's writing.

With Annie being new, she is meeting everyone for the first time and learning about them. Thanks to this perspective the personalities and morality of the infamous crew are called to attention and this was a fun part of reading this one. If I recall Mal had a lot of delightful dialogue in this one in particular, when speaking to Annie and the local lawman. Being such an iconic character, it is rewarding and pleasant to see a story with Mal being Mal exactly as we know and love him. This is not to say others in the book are diminished!

Also, I must mention that the role Wash and Jayne have in this is bloody hilarious. How unusual to pair those two together for one, and luckily they were, being the two most amusing. It's impossible not to visualise these two and how they were in their antics.

I have given perfect scores for all 8 books available up until now. I'm sure others will find less excitement or even less interest in some of these books, even though the books themselves are all pretty good. Naturally I have bias having immense love for the show and everything around its creation, but every book has been immersive, addictive, and deeply entertaining. Much like everyone who yearns for more episodes for the show that can never return as we remember it, these novels certainly can continue as we remember the show.

There is also the possibility of pushing the story into the future, exploring the plots extending beyond the events of the film Serenity. May Titan bless us by publishing even more entries to one of the greatest sci-fi franchises of all time.

Despite having read this one more recently, being the 7th entry, it took a moment to recall much of the events of this book. Back in Shindig we got to see some glamour and a taste of the posh life in Firefly, as well as some of the more serious underlying facts of life in the 'Verse such as the incident with Atherton Wing, and the nature of working with Lord Harrow.

In a similar manner, this book has a superficial layer with a much, much deeper truth hidden behind it. Zoe shows her rebellious streak that emerges time and time again when she doesn't see eye to eye with Mal, and it is more profound here in this book, and for good reason.

It was nice to see Book having a very believable role in this story, and there were some more new details into the Firefly universe added by this story as well. There is a lot of good things to say deeper into the details, but it will sadly be one spoiling element after another! If I recall correctly this is the novel where a very fun dynamic is introduced by pairing up Simon and Inara, involving Simon in a way like his proposed heist on Osiris.

The crew get sucked into a much bigger picture beyond their originally intended involvement, but as Mal would know, that seems to happen often to him and the crew as they tend to have a fair amount of bad luck along with the good.

Being the 7th book, readers sticking to the series this far in have a good idea what to expect, and I certainly don't recall any disappointments here.