Serenity by

27 October 2005


Call no:
Genre:
Setting: ,
Rated :


ISBN: 1416502882
813.54
Novelization of the film by the same name.

Where do you start when you go to write a novelization? Do you just stick to the script, or go off on little tangents of your own? How much can you make up, do you get to collaborate with the director, or talk to any of the actors? Must be pretty hard, imo, to get a good book out of a film, any film.

And I suppose, even more so with Serenity. After all, Joss is god, so how could anyone else do anything but struggle to reinterpret his ‘verse?

This is not a good read, too much of it is like bad fan fiction, only without the benefit of mad sidelines and impossible storylines. I suppose we all have our versions of what goes on inside the characters’ heads, but I rarely agreed with what DeCandido put there.

I haven’t read many novelizations; Ladyhawke, and the Star Wars one by Terry Brooks. Neither of which prompted me to try more, although I did enjoy them more than this. The writing itself is poor, far too much exposition and background. Don’t explain, show. And lines like “Zoe gave him her why-did-I-marry-you-again  ? look” need a better author than this to carry them off. And to be used sparingly. Writing less than half a page later “giving Fanty and Mingo her don’t-even-think-about-me ssing-with-my-captain look” strikes me as over-use.

Obviously the plot is good, I loved the film afterall, but books are not films. Films are not books. And translating one medium to the other takes a huge amount of skill. Here the characters suffer, and I’m a character-loving reader. So this just didn’t float my boat.

Official film site | Author’s site | Whedonesque

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