\nThis was recommended to me as a fun bit of fluff, \u201cFirefly<\/i> in airships.\u201d So I didn\u2019t approach it with the bar set high. Even so, I apparently expect more from my fluff because I was disappointed. Reading it I spent most of my time wondering why it kept missing the mark. What sets a good book apart? What makes the beloved motley crew of Serenity beloved and the pale imitations pale?\n<\/p>\n
\nOne bad habit is the awkward revelation of information in dialog. Yes, it would be nice if the reader learned things as the characters do but if there is no way to make this natural, the writer should just tell us, quickly and simply. Don\u2019t set up a conversation just to have one character ask another to explain the political\/religious\/economic situation of their shared environment.\n<\/p>\n
\nFor the most part, the narrative flow is competent. Despite starting off at gunpoint, it is slow to get going. The real plot doesn\u2019t kick in until page 50. A heist. A double-cross. Our motley crew caught up in machinations and plots, pawns in someone else\u2019s game. Can they foil the plot, save their hides, and clear their names?\n<\/p>\n
\nIn Retribution Falls, the point-of-view refuses to settle. We get inside most of the crew\u2019s heads but don\u2019t stay with any of them long enough to build affection. The most interesting character is the passenger, Crake, a daemonist (someone who harnesses daemonic forces in a scientific way, as we might use electricity). Jez, the navigator, also has some interesting differences she is trying to keep from bubbling to the surface. Had the story been told entirely through either of their eyes, it would have been more interesting. Ostensibly, the ship\u2019s captain, Frey, is the hero. This kind of story demands he be a lovable rogue, a bit crusty from his hard luck life.\n<\/p>\n
\nA frat boy immaturity clings our band of misfits. They each have a distinctive twitch but they don\u2019t have any depth. They whore, drink, and gamble in a gentle PG-rated way \u2014 and I\u2019m thankful that Retribution Falls lacks any real ugliness. For the most part, it\u2019s just flat. And then there\u2019s the matter of our captain\u2019s love life. Painful. Rather than making him admirable, his attitude made me root for the other team. Are we supposed to muster sympathy and feel his outrage when he says, \u201cYou murdered our baby!\u201d to the woman who attempted suicide after he left her at the altar, pregnant with his child. Really?\n<\/p>\n
\nOverall, I found the construction of the characters and environment lazy. The imagined world reminded me of the criticism that Richard Harter made of The Mote in God\u2019s Eye<\/i>: \u201cHack after hack has rewritten Roman and European history into galactic Empires, dark ages, etc. It has been all too much a matter of projecting the romanticism of the past into the future without any real consideration of plausibility.\u201d Retribution Falls<\/i> is Renaissance Fair with pirates in airships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was recommended to me as a fun bit of fluff, \u201cFirefly in airships.\u201d So I didn\u2019t approach it with the bar set high. Even so, I apparently expect more from my fluff because I was disappointed. Reading it I spent most of my time wondering why it kept missing the mark. What sets a good book apart? What makes the beloved motley crew of Serenity beloved and the pale<\/p>\n