River is a badass...but we kind of knew that already

“Firefly: The Ghost Machine” is the 4th novel in the firefly series by James Lovegrove. A series based off the comics and tv shows by Joss Whedon. 

“The Ghost Machine” follows Mal and his crew after both Inara and Shepard Book have left the ship. On one of their notorious missions set up by the ever crooked Badger, Mal actually turns down the cargo. Unwilling to bring a machine with unknown capacity onto his ship he refuses to take the cargo and leaves Jayne in the desert to attempt to drag it back as punishment for Jayne disagreeing with him. For once Jayne is actually a bit clever (I’m not trying to be mean but Jayne is not always the brightest and that's part of why we love him). Jayne pretends that the cargo was too heavy, stashes it behind a rock and once the crew is asleep he hauls it on board and stows it in a secret compartment. 

Little does Jayne know that he’s made an almost fatal mistake. The machine in question is called a Ghost Machine and can be very easily activated. Once activated it causes all life forms around it to hallucinate wildly in very stressful scenarios until it effectively gives them a heart attack and kills them. 

The only person aware of what is happening is River and due to her inability to articulate clearly she is unable to communicate the damage before she is drugged to sleep. River must then save the day by infiltrating each crew members psyche in an attempt to wake them from their dream and change Serenity’s course before they crash directly into an alliance base. 

First of all I made an oops...I somehow got it in my head that this was the third novel not the fourth so I skipped one. These novels stand pretty good on their own so I don’t think it was a super huge deal though I did feel rather stupid when I logged it on goodreads. 

I think this is actually my favorite of the series. It’s very fast paced and intense and confirms all the feelings you get hints at throughout the show and other novels. You see everyone’s greatest desires and their worst fears. You see the questions they have in life about what might have been….It’s intense! 

My favorite part of this novel is getting to see so deeply into River’s mind. You don’t normally see much into River herself, its’ often confusion even in her own mind. She doesn’t just not make sense to other people, she often doesn’t make sense to herself. River makes me so sad, with my anxiety and depression it sometimes feels like I’m going crazy and I know how intensely frustrating and emotionally painful that can be. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to be a genius whose mind has been literally robbed from them, who can’t think straight let alone communicate effectively with the people around her. 

But in this novel you get some of that River badassness. Like the scene in the movie when she locks the entire team away safely and decimates a ton of reavers without a scratch on her. That level of badass...While she was not shooting guns, it was all in her own and the other crew members' psyche, watching her push through her mental trauma and damage, and use her enhanced ability to literally save the day. It was epic! 

If you’re going to read any of the firefly novels. This is the one I would recommend the most...At least so far, I still have to read the third and fifth ones.