Firefly - Life Signs

, #5 of 8

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James Lovegrove: Firefly - Life Signs (Hardcover, 2021, Titan Books)

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published March 16, 2021 by Titan Books.

ISBN:
978-1-78909-227-1
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5 stars (1 review)

Serenity races against time to save Inara's life in an original Firefly tie-in novel that reads like a lost episode from the show

A deadly disease Months after Inara leaves Serenity, Mal and the crew finally learn the reason for her sudden departure: she is dying of a terminal illness. It is Kiehl's Myeloma, a form of cancer that's supposedly incurable, and Inara has very little time left.

A disreputable scientist Through their shock and despair, rumors of a cure reach the crew. Expert Esau Weng is said to have developed a means to treat Inara's condition, but he has been disgraced and incarcerated for life on a notorious Alliance prison planet.

An infamous prison On the planet of Atata, inmates are abandoned with no guards and left to survive as best they can. What's more, terraforming the planet did not take properly, so the world is a frozen wasteland. …

2 editions

reviewed Firefly - Life Signs by James Lovegrove (The Firefly Series, #5 of 8)

Inara's substory emerges

5 stars

The subtle hints to Inara's backstory from the show. Those comments, rather short, bore such foreshadowing. For those unsure about what from the show fueled the basis for this book, two such examples are as follows. When Simon evaluates Inara, being a doctor, he discovers the nature of her present condition, but as her doctor he maintains confidentiality, especially to keep the secret from Mal. Second, during the exquisite episode Out of Gas, Inara responds to a comment about dying in space due to suffocation with "I don't want to die at all". While this could be debated, it is often accepted that this was another clever hint to the backstory the show never had a chance to lead into.

This novel carries on the incomplete plot line, bringing it to the forefront. Her secret is out and clearly laid out, and the crew steps in on a dangerous mission, …