YMMV / Firefly: The Magnificent Nine

• Complete Monster: Elias Vandal leads the Scourers, a band of vicious marauders on the arid world of Thetis. Vandal claims to have once been a Reaver, and while some doubt this claim due to the fantasicalness of it, they have to admit he fits right in with Reaver ethics, such as they are. Vandal and his Scourers typically bully small towns into giving the Scourers the rights to the town's water wells, forcing the townsfolk to buy their own water back from the Scourers. If a village resists, the Scourers will cut off all avenues of escape and destroy all access to water, leaving the people to slowly die of thirst and desperation. Anyone who crosses Vandal will be tortured to death, even his own Scourers. But the icing on this detestable cake is that Vandal, and by extension his Scourers, have a preference for very young women, carrying away any attractive teenage girls to their camp to be "rut dolls". That they're always on the lookout for new ones indicates their tastes run to violent and brutal, and the girls who fall into the Scourers' clutches don't last long.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Vandal is killed by his right-hand Scourer Shem, and the other Scourers quickly surrender due to the combination of losing faith in their leader and having an acre of private security suddenly appear. Shem gives a Rousing Speech about how all the Scourers followed Vandal, but did they do it because they genuinely agreed with him, or because they were afraid of him, or because they were just vaguely angry and finally got to vent that anger? While the private security force takes the Scourers into custody (while admitting that's effectively illegal since they aren't law enforcement, and have no idea what to do with them all that could be considered bringing them to justice), the implication is that without Vandal, the Scourers are okay people. This does not address that they're all complicit in rape, torture, murder, theft, and loads of other crimes, and went about them all in the most despicable way possible.
• Tear Jerker: At the end of the novel, River delivers Jayne a letter from Jane. In it, she talks about accepting that Jayne isn't actually her father, and while she'll probably never know who her real father is, she now likes to imagine he's exactly like Jayne. She thanks him for being good to her, giving her a father figure even if only for a few days, and wishes him well. River calls back to what she said to him near the beginning of the book: "She isn't yours. She was never yours. But you should treat her like she is. And you did." Jayne reads the letter three times in a row, profoundly affected by his near-miss with fatherhood.

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