To Dream in the City of Sorrows by Kathryn M Drennan

 To Dream in the City of Sorrows

By Kathryn M Drennan

Ms. Drennan is an American writer born in 1956, she attended San Diego State University and graduated from Clarion University. It was at San Diego State University that she meet J. Michael Straczynski. They moved to Los Angles in 1981, married in 1983, and divorced in 2003. Ms. Drennan is mostly known for her script work, on shows such as She-Ra Princess of Power, The Real Ghostbusters, Defenders of the Earth, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, and Babylon 5. She's also written a good number of articles and short stories for magazines focused on science fiction. What we're reviewing today is her only full-length novel, which is set in the Babylon 5 universe and one of the few novels that have been declared completely and totally canon on the same level as the show itself. (It is worth noting: I have written fanfic in the B5 universe.  It is very very good.  And it is worth noting that unlike say, Star Trek or Star Wars canonicity is basically determined by Creator Fiat.)

Now some of you may be asking, what the hell is Babylon 5? So let me explain that setting briefly before diving into the novel itself. Babylon 5 was a science fiction television series that aired from 1994 to 1998, along with a brief 2nd series Babylon 5 Crusade running for 13 episodes in 1999 and 6 made-for-television movies. The main series ran a 5-year arc running from the year 2257 to 2262 covering the story of the giant space station Babylon 5. The station was conceived to operate as a sort of interstellar UN where humanity and other alien races could meet in a neutral location and resolve their differences peacefully. This is after humanity had an incredibly close call with extinction at the hands of the Minbari due to a lethal misunderstanding that spiraled out of control (Really really bad first contact.  Earth was an hour away from being Exterminatused when the Minbari called it quits for reasons I won’t spoil.). The Minbari for their part also wished to avoid this happening again and they supported the building of the station, which gave it a lot of weight in the universe. As to whether or not Babylon 5 lived up to being our last, best hope for peace? Well, I encourage you to watch the show, it's one of my favorites (Mine too). 

It is notable as one of the first shows to run in a serial format. Let me explain, unlike today where most shows have a single overarching plot uniting at least a season that each episode advances, back then it was more common to have each episode be entirely self-contained. This is so they could be shown out of order when studios would sell the rights to rerun the series. Babylon 5 didn't do that and as a result, was unpopular with the executives. To be fair the cost of makeup for the various alien characters and special effects (Space scenes were done entirely in CGI, which basically meant a chain-gang of Amigas because they didnt have the budget for higher-end machines {Yeah the special effects for space battles really need remastering} They would need to be redone entirely, but for the early 90s, daaaaamn) likely didn't help as television executives almost always prefer low-cost shows. Such is life. Please note there will be mild spoilers for the show ahead but I'm going to try and keep it to an absolute minimum. 

The novel itself is focused on the first captain of Babylon 5 Jeffery Sinclair after he mysteriously disappeared from the station and his time on the planet Minbar. Sinclair finds himself stationed as ambassador to the Minbari but without a staff or a budget and increasingly isolated from an Earth that seems eager to get rid of him (Which they were.  Earth is not actually the good guy, as a political body, in this series.). Things come to a head when he finds out the Minbari aren't all that interested in having an ambassador. Captain Sinclair has been called to Minbar to lead a paramilitary force known as the Anla'Shok or the Rangers. Why they want Captain Sinclair to lead this force is a bit complicated and I'll try to sum it up. 

When the Minbari first achieved interstellar travel, roughly 1000 years ago, they walked into a massive war (Editors note: we did some digging and figured out that a lot of their tech was due to alien meddling in their development and factional warfare before they figured out interstellar travel). On one side an ancient alien race called the Shadows, on the other side, everyone who didn't want their civilization reduced to ashes. The Shadows were basically running loose in the galaxy playing a game of burn all the ant hills, only the ant hills were the planets and settlements of any other alien race that had achieved a certain level of space flight. Almost as if their Prime Directive was If they can achieve Warp Speed, then blow up their cities. A lot of races tried to hide out and hope they weren't noticed. The Minbari don't do hiding out, however, and despite all the odds being against them decided to sally out to challenge these dragons running riot among the stars. They got their asses whupped. Like as if they were toddlers fighting a full-grown professional boxer whupped (The Minbari are the most advanced of the younger races.  They have gravitic drives, and their weapons consist of antineutron beams when most others are using lasers and plasma cannons.  This is a setting where almost nobody has energy shields of any kind.  The Shadows in turn, laugh at them.). 

Then a special Minbari, not born of Minbari, named Valen showed up, literally out of nowhere.  He founded the Rangers as a united military force, reorganized Minbari society, and with the use of a powerful space station he led the Minbari and their coalition of alien allies to victory. With Valen's leadership that coalition included the Vorlons, a mysterious and old race that was almost a match for the Shadows (Caveat.  Ship for ship, they overmatch the Shadows, they just don’t have as many ships. {Hence almost a match since the Shadows will never be stupid enough to go for 1 on 1 fights, their tactical skill was another point in the show's favor}). After the war, the rangers were reduced in number and pretty much put on standby... For a thousand years, we have languages that didn’t last that long on Earth for comparison.

Some of the Minbari believe the Shadows are returning so they need to expand the Rangers back to their wartime strength, ready the other races, and get ready for the kind of throwdown that breaks entire species. The reason they think Sinclair is the man to do this is they believe that Sinclair was somehow born with all or at least part of Valen's soul. This is complicated by Sinclair openly stating he doesn't believe a word of it but the Minbari are willing to just shrug that off as most true believers would be. 

 

Now not every Minbari believes this or approves of this. In fact, most of the professional military is violently opposed (They’re still mad they didn’t get to flex/prove their manliness by genociding that comparative child-race that is humanity.). So the novel covers a number of the early struggles to bring up the ranger's numbers and the fact that the decision is made, if we have a human leading this force why not recruit a bunch of humans to fight in it with the Minbari? So Sinclair has to fight against Minbari who want to get rid of this weird alien on their homeworld, his own government, and the attempts of the Minbari and Vorlons trying to force him into their own pre-determined mold of Messiah, to create a force that can prevent everyone from... You know... Dying, and doing it in secret because if the Shadows find out about this before he's ready to fight them, then things aren't going to go well. 

The novel covers a period that isn't touched on in the show and gives us the fate of a character that disappeared after the show, Catherine Sakai, Sinclair's fiancee. It also shows us the origin of a character that first appeared in season 3, Marcus Cole. I have to note that one very well-done piece of writing was bringing in Cole rather late in the game, making him this honestly cool and interesting character that the fans didn't loathe on sight. There are a lot of shows that fail to do that and I think the secret sauce here was that JMS knew to make Cole cool and interesting but never let him upstage or overwhelm the pre-established characters. Here we get to meet Cole before his days as a Ranger and see the incident that caused him to drop everything else in his life and join the cause. Both of those threads are handled well without detracting from Sinclair's storyline. They are blended together to create a solid and entertaining story that fills in a lot of gaps in the space between Season I and Season II. 

Now the big issue here is for anything in this damn novel to make sense you have to have seen Season I. The good news is that you don't have to watch all 110 episodes of the series, but nothing in this book makes sense without the grounding of Season I. It's honestly not a good introduction to the Babylon 5 universe, which to be fair was never intended to be and is relentlessly geared towards someone who, if not a fan, has at least some knowledge of the show's events and plot. Although I must ask: if you're not a Babylon 5 fan, why would you read this book in the first place? This novel is meant as a bridge between stories, not as a doorway into the universe itself. So if you're looking to get into Babylon 5, this isn't the place to start. Go watch The Gathering or In The Beginning television movies instead is going to be my advice. 

One thing I do like is the treatment of Sinclair and his character here (Hot take: I always preferred Sinclair to Sheridan {Your loyalty to the Master Control Program is noted user}). He doesn't believe he's the reincarnation of Valen and is very open, very firm, but polite in his unbelief. He also makes it clear that he's not interested in being forced into a pre-existing mold or acting out a role that he had no say in. He'll do the job but he'll do it his way and he's not giving up his life to do it. Ms. Drennan manages to give Captain Sinclair a massive amount of gravitas and quiet dignity in his diplomatic but unyielding stance on this issue even in the face of an alien Vorlan who might as an individual be older than the English language (Oh, the Vorlons are older than that, on an individual level.  More like older than written language.). There's very little teenage angst or posturing so you're left believing that every character here is a mature adult capable of making thoughtful decisions. Which is a nice change of pace compared to a lot of fantasy series! 

There's a fair bit of action as Sinclair is training and leading a military force gearing up to fight aliens who as a society are older than our very species. The novel does a good job of showing the Shadows as a terrifying but not invincible force, just one that will not be defeated without a lot of sacrifice and pain. The action scenes in this book do a good job of foreshadowing the kind of battles that will be fought later in the show and are honestly pretty fun to read. To Dream in the City of Sorrows by Kathryn M Drennan gets a B.

I hope you enjoyed this review, if you did consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads for as little as a dollar a month.  The ever-wise patrons get exclusive content, votes on future subjects of book reviews and videos, and more!  Speaking of, special thanks to frigidreads biggest supporter Big Steve! Next week we’ll dig deeper into the Minbari with a video about their canon history.  The week after the unofficial history video will go up.  I hope to see you there. Until then take care of yourself, take care of each other, and of course, keep reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen  

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders