Despite a relative lack of reviews of his books due to the timing of my having read most of them before I started here, I like to think it’s no secret that Steven Brust is one of my favorite authors. And I’m positive that it’s no secret that Firefly is one of my favorite TV shows. So, you know what would be cool? If Brust were to write a Firefly tie-in novel and get it sold and start off a chain reaction of new book farm awesomeness. I mean, probably most of the authors would not work out that well, so there’s that, but I love the characters enough to put up with almost anything out of said hypothetical book farm other than bad character depictions. And believe it or not, that dream may have been closer than you think! However, not all dreams can come true, and nobody ultimately published the novel that he wrote a couple of years ago. Which would be where the story ends, in tears and bloody recriminations, except that he’s self-published it under the Creative Commons license, and you can read it whenever you want, for free. That’s cool except for the lack of future novels and his not getting paid, which he really should be.

My Own Kind of Freedom is tidily short novel set in the nebulous months between the end of the series and the movie, Serenity, and informed by both. Except for being slightly too long for that, it feels very much like an episode of the show, and in all the good ways. A standard shipping run turns quickly dangerous when Jayne and Mal have a parting of ways and Jayne is left free to make another attempt at collecting the reward on the head of the Tams. And, one problem never really being enough to stymie the crew of Serenity for long, unfriendly faces from Mal and Zoë’s past are popping up in the single unfriendliest place the Unification War had to offer the both of them. (And if this summary isn’t enough to get you going, it’s because you haven’t watched Firefly yet. And you really should! So go ahead. I’ll wait.)

Brust’s plotting and typically spare prose are a known quantity by now. His characterizations shine as brightly as if the entire story had been written in Firefly’s script room and then performed by the cast, voices and often images being piped directly into my brain. The story is dense, also a known quantity of Brust’s; the man loves to write just enough to let you figure out everything that’s going on, instead of providing it all to you, piece by piece. All of these are positive things, from my perspective. The only flaw, if you can call it that, is that I’ve been once again reminded of just how little access I have to a universe that could have been mined for years of entertainment. There’s time yet, though. Look how Star Trek turned out.