Techno Mages III: Invoking Darkness By Jeanne Cavelos

 Techno Mages III: Invoking Darkness 

By Jeanne Cavelos

This is the third book in the series, and I have already reviewed the last two, so I’m not going to spend any space setting things up.  If you want to know more about the wider universe these books are set in or the plot up until now, look at my last couple of reviews.  I have also made some YouTube videos discussing the history of the various Babylon 5 races. Those will be linked below, so feel free to take a look. 

Quick warning, there are spoilers here. I think they’re rather minor for this book, but I am mentioning some heavy plot points, so you’ve been warned.  

So there’s this saying I keep hearing, mostly about addiction and recovery, that you have to hit rock bottom before you can get better.  I have no idea if that’s true, but Ms. Cavelos does a great job of making us believe Galen is slamming into bedrock, and, like all true writers, she figures out ways to make it worse.

Let us start with the situation as it stands at the beginning of the book.  Galen and the mages have withdrawn from the galaxy into a secret hiding place, hiding from the forces of the Shadows which are plunging the galaxy into a whirlwind of blood and fire.  This hiding place is a small one which forces the mages together into close proximity, something they don’t deal with very well.  Personality conflicts and outright violence flare up fairly constantly.  Their society is hovering on the brink of extinction, and they all know it. 

Some of the Techno-Mage leadership is in deep denial, believing if they can just stay in their hole, eventually a solution for their problems will pop up with no effort of their own. Or maybe they’re hoping someone will do something and remove the necessity of making some painful and difficult choices.  Remember this, we’ll come back to it. 

Galen, on the flip side, thinks the Mages going extinct would be a good thing, and he has withdrawn deep into himself.  His relationship with his teacher and adoptive father Elric is in tatters, to describe it optimistically.  This is still the strongest relationship he has, as he barely speaks to any of the other Mages, and focuses all his energy on mental exercises designed to keep him from feeling or remembering anything as well as researching his spells to develop more of the basic Shadow powers that the other Mages left behind generations ago.   

The Mage leadership, known as the Circle, doesn’t help at all with his efforts to remain emotionally detached.  They task Galen with observing the outside galaxy and reporting to them what’s going on.  So they’ve taken a guy who has unresolved trauma from being betrayed by his friend Elizar, having his lover murdered in front of him by Elizar, and finding out everything he’s ever believed about the history of the Mages was a lie, but instead they are actually creations of Shadow Technology meant to bring destruction and anarchy to the galaxy… And they had him watch a war that is actively genociding entire species across hundreds of worlds into extinction. There’s clueless leadership, and then there’s this. 

Events are going to conspire to break up this gray mire of suffering that Galen is stuck in, but it’s mostly going to involve more suffering.  First, Elric finds a defector from the Mages to the Shadows and dies, stopping them.  Second, Galen is going to have to watch a childhood friend be tortured by Elizar and his confederates, and the only thing he can do is kill her to limit her suffering. That would likely be enough, but he realizes that Elizar has learned how to use the spell of destruction, the first ancient Shadow spell that Galen reverse-engineered. 

So Galen convinces the Circle to let him leave the Mages' hiding place, on a mission of murder.  He is sent to kill three people: Mr. Morden, a human Shadow servant who tempted Mages into the service of Shadows; and the traitor mage siblings, Elizar and Razeel.  He is given 35 days to find them, murder them, and come home, which, if you ask me, is a very optimistic timeframe for an interstellar assassination mission against moving targets!

All of this interweaves with the end of Season 3 of the Babylon 5 television show, and we get a good look at the fate of Anna Sheridan. Anna Sheridan was the wife of Captain John Sheridan, the main character of the television show. She was rendered completely inhuman by her time in the Shadow vessel, with her personality and memories completely destroyed. What happened to her wasn’t just the destruction of who Anna Sheridan was before the Shadows took her, but also the destruction of everything that made her a human being. This is important because Captain Sheridan and Galen are both moving towards the same results: a confrontation that will lead to revelations that will leave them either with a kind of enlightenment, or dead or completely enslaved.  Seeing Anna ’s fate makes us realize just how complete and thorough Shadow enslavement is.

Galen, for his part, will learn how Techno-Mage implants are created, and that knowledge will horrify him to his very core.  He will learn just how tightly enmeshed into the Shadow’s plans he has been from the very beginning.  He will also learn why the Shadows have refrained from killing him, and, well, I hate to drag up the old cliches, but this really does fit the line “fate worse than death.” 

At first, Galen’s mission was entirely about revenge, but over the length of the book, it becomes more complicated and honestly more important than revenge. As Galen learns more about how the Shadows operate and how they keep their agents in line, the more he realizes that what the Shadows want is for everyone else to live in a maelstrom of chaos and blood, while they get to exercise complete control over the galaxy.  For example, we learn that Mr. Morden has an implant in his brain that stimulates him into feeling constant feelings of comfort and pleasure while doing what the Shadows want. Which left me asking just how much free will did Mr. Morden have?  Especially since the book reveals he was completely unaware of this implant. 

These uncomfortable questions also apply to Galen: how much free will does he have with Shadow Technology interwoven into his very bones?  Can he even try to exercise free will while trapped in their greatest fortress?  What is the difference between him and Anna Sheridan? The answers to these questions won’t just be life or death, but will be the difference between a life of self-loathing, closed off from everyone around him, and Galen finally accepting himself, his past, his present, and his future, and the pure uncertainty that awaits him. 

This book was incredibly interesting for me, both as a Babylon 5 fan and as just a novel in its own right.  I don’t think you have to be a Babylon 5 fan to appreciate this story, but I am going to say that Babylon 5 fans are going to get more out of this book and the trilogy than anyone else.  This is a very interesting story that is anchored by Galen’s journey from the absolute depths of despair and self-loathing to self-acceptance and knowledge, and above all else, inner peace. That said, while I could always use more inner peace, I don’t think I want to go to the lengths Galen did to achieve it.