I rented Serenity because I finished Firefly, basically, and I wanted to see the further adventures of the crew. After being accidentally spoiled, I decided to watch it as soon as I could, to cut down on such unsavory encounters with canon.

Serenity is the story of the crew of Serenity, a worn old ship with a ragtag crew, led by Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a veteran of a recent civil war- on the losing side. Eking out an existence as far away from the Alliance as possible, the crew takes on any work it can. Along the way, they’ve picked up Simon Tam and River Tam- a pair of fugitives. Suddenly, they’re now being targeted by the Operative, an assassin sent by the government, and the Reavers, barely human savages from the edge of space, have been showing up more frequently.

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Bottom line: Serenity is a thrilling introduction to Joss Whedon’s Firefly universe for newcomers, and a thoroughly satisfying coda for Firefly fans.

The Eyre Affair
by Jasper Fforde




 

I’ve heard of the Thursday Next series off and on- I’ve seen fellow students walking around with a copy, and, of course, it was recommended in Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust. (I must mention that I drew up a great deal of my reading list from Pearl’s Book Lust and More Book Lust, which is why it pops up in my reviews so often.) The more I heard about it, the more I liked it- alternate history, a dash of science fiction, a dollop of detection, and a heaping spoonful of action/adventure... it’s almost perfectly engineered for me. It’s a marvel I haven’t gotten around to reading them before! Obviously, I started off with the first in the series, The Eyre Affair.

The Eyre Affair introduces us to a slightly different universe- Wales is its own republic, the Crimean War has been going forever (versus an Imperial Russia), literature is taken so seriously gang wars erupt over the question of “Who wrote Shakespeare?”, and England is a police state in the grip of the Goliath Corporation, which helped it recover after World War II. It’s 1985, and Thursday Next, a Crimean War veteran, is a literary detective in England’s Special Operations. Her life gets complicated after a stakeout of criminal mastermind Acheron Hades is botched and a minor character from Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit is found murdered in very real reality- and Hades has his sights set on his next victim, a young lady by the name of Jane Eyre...

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Bottom line: The Eyre Affair is a thrilling mix of alternate history, science fiction, detective story, and action/adventure, with the cherry of metafictionality on top. Thursday Next’s literary adventures are not to be missed, although I do advise brushing up on your Jane Eyre before reading The Eyre Affair. 

Salman Rushdie has been recommended to me a few times, but I wanted to see exactly what got him in all that trouble- his depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. The librarian who checked the book out for me warned me she hadn’t been able to finish it. Soon after, the Answer Bitch made a passing comment about Rushdie’s fatwah on a podcast, and her current Bitchling piped up that she hadn’t been able to finish it. Naturally, I was determined to read it and finish it. I have never backed down from a book before- not even Slaughterhouse Five, which I absolutely loathe. (But not as much as I hate Samuel Beckett.)

The Satanic Verses is the story of two Indian men- Gibreel Farishta, a Bollywood superstar, and Saladin Chamcha, an actor who has spent his life trying to reinvent himself as a British gentleman. After their hijacked plane from Bombay explodes in midair, the two fall to Earth and miraculously survive. The miracle continues in England- Gibreel develops a halo, and Saladin develops all the trappings of a satyr, from horns to hooves. Other stories interweave, as Gibreel’s dreams force him to play the Archangel Gibreel in several Islamic tales, such as the Prophet Muhammad’s encounters with the Archangel Gibreel (Muhammad is called Mahound, “The Messenger”, in the novel), and the story of Ayesha, who led her village on a Pilgrimage to Mecca. The title of the novel comes from a few renounced verses of the Qur'an, which would have allowed prayers to three Pagan goddesses of Mecca.

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Bottom line: The Satanic Verses suffers from its sheer density of stories and backstories, but the main story, that of the angelic (or is he?) Gibreel Farishta and demonic (or is he?) Saladin Chamcha, is solid, with the theme of migration firmly in its heart.