Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy.  Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them.

As a massive fan of Firefly I have been absolutely enjoying the recent spate of fiction that has been based on this awesome television show in the last year. I have already read and reviewed the first two books in this new series of Firefly novels, Big Damn Hero and The Magnificent Nine, and I also recently picked up the first volume of the Firefly comic book series, The Unification War: Part One, which I intend to review soon. I have loved all these recent pieces of Firefly fiction, which is why I am so eager for the subject of this week’s Waiting on Wednesday, Firefly: Generations by Tim Lebbon.

I recently featured Firefly: Generations on my Top Ten Most Anticipated July-December 2019 Releases list, but I have decided to go into a little more detail about it in this post. Generations will be the third book in Titan Books’ new series of Firefly books and is set for release on 15 October 2019. A plot synopsis of Generations has already been released, and it sounds pretty epic.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Mal wins an old map in a card game. Ancient and written in impenetrable symbols, the former owner insists it’s worthless. Yet River Tam can read it, and says it leads to one of the Arks, legendary ships that brought humans from Earth-that-was to the ‘Verse. The salvage potential alone is staggering. But the closer they get to the ancient ship, the more agitated River becomes. She says something is waiting inside, something powerful, and very angry…

There are some really cool details in the synopsis above that make me extremely keen for this book, including the character that is likely to be at the centre of the plot. While the first two books in the series focused on Mal and Jayne respectfully, it looks like Generations is going to focus on River Tam. River was one of the most intriguing characters in the Firefly television show, as she was a young prodigy who was turned by an evil government into a half-crazed psychic assassin. Hunted by the government because of the secrets she holds in her head, River spends her time on Serenity suffering intense mental breakdowns, making physic examinations of the people she meets, and acting as the ship’s ultimate killing machine, saving the crew on multiple occasions with her lethal skills. While River is likely to be a hard character to capture in book form, I am really looking forward to a story that focuses on her, and it will be interesting to see how far into her fractured psyche the author delves.

While the potential focus on River is going to be cool, I also really like the sound of the rest of the plot synopsis. A story set around a dangerous salvage in wild space has so much potential, and I am pretty darn curious to find out what is lying in wait for them aboard that ancient generation ship. I’m hoping that some Reavers show up in this book, although I doubt that the characters aboard Serenity share my sentiments there. I am also keen to learn more about the early days of the universe that Firefly is set in, especially about the generation ships that took humanity away from Earth.

I have not read any of Tim Lebbon’s books before, but it appears he has some significant experience writing media tie-in novels. In addition to his original series, some of Lebbon’s previous works include the Hellboy books Unnatural Selection and The Fire, two 30 Days of Night novelisations, Alien: Out of the Shadows, Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi – Into the Void and the Kong: Skull Island novelisation. Firefly: Generations will actually not be the first piece of Joss Whedon’s work that Lebbon has adapted into a book before, as he previously did a novelisation of The Cabin in the Woods back in 2011. I think that this novel is in safe hands and I am looking forward to seeing what Lebbon can do with the Firefly universe.

To be honest, I was always going to grab this upcoming Firefly book when it came out, but I am actually really intrigued by the cool-sounding story and the focus on the character of River Tam. Firefly: Generations sounds incredibly awesome, and I know I am really going to love it. What will the crew of Serenity find in the generation ship? I am going to have a hard time waiting till October to find out.