English translations of three or four Stendhal works are available from the Mobileread Forum: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebooks.php?ltr=S&pp=0&genreid=&sort=ebook&order=asc&forumid=130
I agree it's a fine adventure. The action is somewhat buried under pages of romantic or philosophical discussion, where the protagonists come to grips with the situation: in reality they would have been killed while talking. And that is exactly what the author wanted to say: better stop and talk instead of rushing to war.
A few improbabilities at the end don't matter in this well-written tale that kept me hooked throughout. Nautical adventure at its best in a near perfect transcription.
Though it's in the Young readers' bookshelf, I found this novel a remarkably unpredictable account of a story about two brothers, including a murder (but not a mystery/detective story in the usual sense). A bit of moral discussion is included, however, the conclusion is quite unconventional.
I still would say it's hard SF because it speculates about a situation where aliens have hidden intelligence and the technical development suffers from periodical drawbacks. This scenario is pictured beautifully. I nearly bailed out of the book when most of the protagonists were wandering about aimlessly, for a hundred of pages.
I also enjoyed the excellent writing in this mixture of fairy tale and boyish adventure. I am however glad that today's children get a less nationalist and honor-heavy education, and develop much more abilities than a good memory and the command of many languages.
Beforehand, I've never seen Firefly. This novel, for me, was mil-like SF with interesting action, written in a personal but cool style. The persons were not opaque and had enough depth to keep me at turning pages. Contrarily, reading about Firefly in Wikipedia, I'm not sure if I would invest the time to look at the series.
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