Reading the Babylon 5 Novels: “Blood Oath” by John Vornholt

Having finally watched Babylon 5 for the first time (check out my posts for that series at my Babylon 5 Hub), I decided to dive into the novels. I’ll be reading them largely in publication order and reviewing them individually as we go along. Please do not spoil later books for me. There will be SPOILERS for the book reviewed going forward.

Blood Oath by John Vornholt

Blood Oath is a novel that would have made a stellar short story. It fits the series better than the first two novels, and it doesn’t suffer from the out of character moments those novels had, either. The whole novel is a kind of addendum to the episode from the first season, “The Parliament of Dreams.” This ties it in to the series in a fun way, but it also makes it seem overlong since its plot really is just an extension of that episode.

What happens here is that the daughter of Du’Rog, whose name was allegedly besmirched by G’Kar, takes out a Shon’Kar against G’Kar, swearing to kill him. G’Kar sees the threat as imminent and fakes his death in order to escape. He then makes his way to the Narn Homeworld, independently pursued by Na’Toth, Garibaldi, and Ivanova.

We saw the backstory for this novel, again, in “The Parliament of Dreams.” Vornholt ties this novel quite well into that episode, though some of the timeline is ambiguous. The action moves along well, though the book does ultimately run into some serious pacing issues in the middle section. That section basically has G’Kar running into people (or not) who recognize him (or don’t) while Ivanova and Garibaldi haplessly look for him across the homeworld. There are only so many close misses and chase scenes one can take before it starts to feel like padding, and this novel is definitely padded for length. Some judicious editing would have made it a fantastic short story though, especially with its strong ties to the plot of the show.

The conclusion is great, and we witness a wonderfully fun moment between G’Kar and Mollari right at the end which left me with a sweet taste after the occasional slog.

Fun fact from The Babylon File: The Definitive Unauthorised Guide to J Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 by Andy Lane about Vornholt’s research for the book–which he was given only 2 months to write! Lane quotes Vornholt: “I asked [JMS] for information on the Narn homeworld for Blood Oath, but he told me to make it up. I thought this was very cavalier of him, until I realised he was going to destroy the planet in a war” (388).

Another fun fact, though I’m not sure if it’s intentional: the name “Mi’Ra” for G’Kar’s rival, is quite similar to “Mira,” the first name of Mira Furlan, who plays Delenn in the series. Again, I don’t have a source saying if it was intentional, but it seemed a fun Easter egg at the time I noticed.

Blood Oath is the best of the first 3 Babylon 5 novels, though it still has its issues with pacing. It ties in well to the series, and Vornholt captures the characters believably. Vornholt gives readers more fun character scenes than expected, and so I give it a reserved recommendation for fans of the series.

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Links

Babylon 5 Hub– Find all my Babylon 5-related posts and content here.

J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

Reading the Babylon 5 Novels: “Accusations” by Lois Tilton

Having finally watched Babylon 5 for the first time (check out my posts for that series at my Babylon 5 Hub), I decided to dive into the novels. I’ll be reading them largely in publication order and reviewing them individually as we go along. Please do not spoil later books for me. There will be SPOILERS for the book reviewed going forward.

Accusations by Lois Tilton

Accusations is the second Babylon 5 novel, and, like the first, it’s an imperfect experience. The core plot here is about Ivanova and Garibaldi solving a murder mystery on Babylon 5. That’s certainly a plot that one would expect to be within their purview, and Lois Tilton does a good job integrating enough twists and turns to let this be the central plot for the whole novel.

The writing isn’t half bad, either. Tilton captures Ivanova’s role fairly early on, and I enjoyed the tie-in at the very end of the book that basically bookends the novel with standard Babylon 5 operations. There’s a complexity to Ivanova’s portrayal here that makes it engaging. However, the problems with the book begin with Ivanova as well. She ends up at one point letting Talia Winters scan her, something that would never have happened with the Ivanova we know from the show, especially from later seasons. Accusations was published in 1995, so sometime during Season 2. But that makes it difficult to look back on with the knowledge from later seasons that negate this somewhat key scene.

If you’re willing to ignore such problems reconciling this book with the later series–something a reader could probably do by assuming the scan happened and Ivanova somehow convinced/coerced Winters to not tell too much afterwords–you’re going to get good mileage out of this novel. Tilton’s prose sometimes captures the conversational style punctuated with humor that the show does so well. At other times, it can fall flat. But for a tie-in novel, her writing does the job.

I do have to ask: Why is G’Kar even on the cover? He barely even appears in the book–so little that I’m questioning if I even remember him showing up or if I’m conflating it with the first book in my head. I was hoping he’d have a role in some of the plotting happening on the station. But he doesn’t, and neither do any other alien characters. This is a story almost entirely about Ivanova, Winters, and Garibaldi, with a cast of other humans thrown along for the ride. That doesn’t necessarily make this a bad novel, but it does take away some of the feel of Babylon 5. On the other hand, this hyper-focus on humans means that we get some insights into how far force, human corporations, and some workings of the politicking happening behind the scenes. It’s not a lot, but it is interesting to get just a glimpse into some background there.

Ultimately, Accusations is a decent read for fans of Babylon 5. It captures Ivanova’s character well–apart from the major flub discussed above–and mostly captivates readers with an interesting mystery plot at its core. There are also revelations about human forces shaping into potential for later conflict in the TV series, as we saw in later seasons. The book is an imperfect but satisfying read for fans, especially if they’re inclined to be forgiving when reading tie-in novels.

(All links to Amazon are Affiliates.)

Links

Babylon 5 Hub– Find all my Babylon 5-related posts and content here.

J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.