Jeanne Cavelos 'The Passing of the Techno-Mages: Book I Casting Shadows', 'Book II Summoning Light', Book III Invoking Darkness'
'Who are you?', 'Want do you want?', 'Who do you serve and who do you trust?'
It is November 2258 and dragons, angels and shooting stars fall from the sky of the planet Soom; the techno-mages are gathering. One of their number, the apprentice Galen is about to make a terrible discovery which will cause him to challenge everything that he has been led to believe and shake the foundations of his order.
These are the final three spin-off books from the TV series Babylon 5 and for fans of the show they make required reading. Skilfully woven in and out of several episodes of Babylon 5 and Crusade they fill in much of the background of techno-mages particularly Galen and Elric. Having finished the series I understand much more about where they fit into the scheme of the things. But ultimately I found the books frustrating, they spend too much time and effort filling in events of the TV series rather than adding to the overall story. By far the best bits were those outside of the TV series, Galen's relationship with Isabelle (although that is shown in passing in Crusade) and the death of Elric. What I wanted was not more detail of events already known but more new material, particularly more of Crusade. Still the final optimistic pages do make a suitable way to round up the whole Babylon 5/ Crusade story, apparently there will be no more.
336 pages, 356 pages, 357 pages, published by Del Rey
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