Wizard's Blog

Burn Notice: The Fix book cover

Right now I'm reading Burn Notice: The Fix by Tod Goldberg.

Let me begin by saying that I'm a huge fan of Burn Notice.  It's among my favourite TV shows¹, so I bought the book as soon as I knew it existed (I did the same think with the Monk books).

I'm such a fan of Burn Notice that I would buy, read and enjoy any book they released, but I couldn't help but noticing that Burn Notice: The Fix needs more editing.

I found the first mistake on page 4 - instead of Miami-Dade it says Miami-Dad.  And it's not just spelling - on page 182 it says Overhead, planes were taxiing into and out of Miami International.  Really?  They were taxiing overhead?  Were you buried under the airport?

On the other hand, since the TV show uses first person narration in Michael Westen's voice, the book being written in the first person feels just right.

I was surprised that there are mentions of sub-prime loans and bank collapses in the book - although our current economic problems have been looming for a while, I didn't expect to start seeing them in fiction quite so quickly.

So far there has been one really good quote in the book:

"What do you normally eat for breakfast?"

"Al-Quaeda," I said. "Or yogurt."

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1. Monk, Psych, Dexter,  Chuck, House, Bones, Life, Pushing Daisies, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, The Closer, The Middleman, Eureka, Reaper, How I Met Your Mother, True Blood, My Name Is Earl, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Big Bang Theory.  Looking at that list, I guess I watch too much television - that's only the top ones and only ones that are still being made (bring back Firefly!). [↩]

Image from WikipediaIn February, Steven Brust published an unauthorized Firefly fanfic novel on the Internet. I've only just got around to finishing it.

Let me first of all say that I am a fan of Firefly - and I mean "fan" in its fullest sense, as in short for "fanatic". As far as I'm concerned Firefly is the best sci-fi TV show ever made. The dialog was amazing, the unsteady-steadicam effects both on set and in CGI (!) were a breath of fresh air, the writing, the realism... The fact that it was cancelled after a single series is a travesty.

I didn't think the Serenity movie was anywhere near as good as the Firefly series, though I couldn't say why - it just didn't feel the same. I wanted it to be good so very much.

I've also been a fan of Steven Brust's Dragaeran series, which I was introduced to, very strangely, by Penny Arcade. He's not the best author I've ever read - there's an air of wish fulfillment to his books that smells amateurish, but I still bought almost all of the books in the series. I worried about his Firefly fanfic, as fanfic tends to be amateurish and full of wish fulfillment at the best of times.

However I was very pleasantly surprised - I don't think the novel could have been better if it'd been written by Joss Whedon himself. He's got the characters to a T - I could imagine all of the characters in the series saying all of the dialog in the book, thinking the same things (even River!) and acting in the same ways. Brust must have done a lot of research, because he even has all of the Chinese swearing and technical jargon down. Separate from the fanfic aspect, as a novel on its own there's nothing to complain about - the plotting is clean and professional. All in all a good read.

I do now understand why people complain about reading things on computer screens (although I still view people who print out emails with eyebrow raised).