The Passing of the Techno-Mages: Summoning Light
Jeanne Cavelos
This is book two of the Passing of the Techno-Mages, a trilogy of novels set in the Babylon 5 universe. I reviewed the first book, and if you haven’t read that review yet, I encourage you to read it first. Quick warning: there are spoilers for the first book after this paragraph, so you have been warned.
This series of books delves into the Techno-Mages, a group of beings known for being able to create wonders. They only appeared in a single episode of the main show, although Galen, the main character of this series, is a major character in the Babylon 5 follow-up series Crusade. The Techno-Mages are a secretive bunch with many astonishing abilities, so it’s no wonder they are even today a focus of fan interest.
Book II picks up where Book I left off, with Galen and the universe around him in complete and utter shambles. The Shadows, a race of aliens who’ve been in space longer than we’ve existed as a species, are returning. A thousand years ago they plunged the galaxy into a maelstrom of war and death. They were only fought back through a backbreaking effort by an alliance led by the Minbari leader Valen. They are returning, and they intend to do it all over again to bring interstellar civilization crashing down in the name of their Social Darwinist ideology.
They’re off to a good start, because they’ve managed to bring Galen’s life crashing down pretty easily. Galen had met the love of his life, Isabelle, and just as quickly lost her. It’s made worse by the fact that she was murdered by the mage that Galen considered his closest friend, Elizar. So in a very short time he discovered that civilization itself is at risk, his friend is a traitor to everything he believes is good and pure… and he has lost the one person who meant so much to him. Compounding this is the fact that Galen is sure he could have saved her, but to do so would have meant forswearing his oath to the Circle, the governing body of the Techno-Mages.
You see, in the first book, Galen was able to unlock the secret to a spell of incredible power, something that lets him destroy just about anything in range. It terrified the council so much that they made him swear to never cast it. He kept to that oath, refusing to cast it when his friend Elizar turned on him and Isabelle. In that fight, Elizar murdered Isabelle with a slow and painful spell. This is one of many things that weigh heavily on Galen, and this book piles more weight on top of that.
Meanwhile, his mentor Elric is also going through it. First of all, there’s the anguish that he feels seeing Galen sink into depression, a depression that leads Galen to withdraw into himself and try to isolate himself from the people who still love him, including Elric. Galen is the closest thing Elric has to a son, and the fact that Elric sent Galen on the mission that did so much harm to him is an extra twist of the knife.
You would think that would be enough, but Elric is struggling with the results of a much more profound failure. He is a member of the Circle, and he was the only one to vote for fighting against the Shadows when Galen and Isabelle found proof of their return. The remaining three voted to run and hide. That failure is bitter, and this book never fails to pile consequences onto failure.
Techno-Mages can create what they call places of power: by using parts of their implants, they intertwine themselves with entire planets. Elric can see events on the other side of his adopted planet. He can feel the fires at the planet's core, the air pressure in its upper atmosphere. To leave, he has to destroy his place of power, and doing so injures him badly. Reading the book and seeing the signs of his injuries feels like I’m watching a man trying to recover from a stroke, and he has to do this while engaging in a deep plan to make it look like the Techno Mages have been destroyed.
This part of the book overlaps with the Babylon 5 episode Geometry of Shadows. It provides a lot of depth and a sort of behind-the-scenes look at what was going on with this episode. This gives us a showcase of what books can do that more visual media can’t; for example, this book gives us a greater look at events that the station staff was unaware of, and a deeper look into what Elric was trying to accomplish. Which, all on its own, makes this book worth it for fans of Babylon 5. That said, much like the last book, no greater knowledge of Babylon 5 is really needed to appreciate this story.
Galen, on the other hand, accompanies another member of the Circle, Blaylock, to an outpost of the Shadows. I find Blaylock interesting because he is an incredibly severe and disciplined character, but not a cruel or hypocritical one. He believes the Mages can only gain full control over their implants by embracing a monastic lifestyle of restriction and unrelenting discipline. He cannot pursue this lifestyle in a warzone, but he will take risks in order to protect the Mage order.
Blaylock wants to gather more information, and Galen is hoping to find Elizar and kill him. They find more than they bargain for, and Galen learns the secret of the Techno-Mages. Their implants were not the invention of a wondrous, now extinct alien race of benign scholars, but rather the creation of the Shadows, gifted to a fractious and warlike race that destroyed itself because of those implants. Finding this brings Galen to the very edge of destruction; he believed that the Techno-Mages were sages, dream makers, and delvers of mystery. Instead, they were always meant to be brutal weapons for destruction and chaos, and the Circle, the leaders of the Mages, knew the whole time.
Which means that Elric knew. Elric knew and kept the secret from him. Elric knew the Shadows were never entirely gone, and sent him on the mission that almost ripped out his soul. Galen is left even worse than when we started, as now his loyalties are pushed to the breaking point, and everything he has ever hoped for in life is reduced to ash in his mouth. This story brings Galen and Elric to their lowest point, while stressing them greatly, not just as individuals but also in their relationship to each other and to the Techno-Mage order as a whole.
Despite this, the book does end on a slightly hopeful note: the Mages, despite heavy losses, manage to escape. Instead of surrendering to the Shadows, they decide to accept the risk of the order going extinct, as the Shadows will cut them off from any new implants and make it impossible to create new Techno-Mages. Galen and Elric make choices that seem small at the time but will have great implications later: Elric refusing to leave Galen behind during a battle, for example, and Galen choosing to save a life when he could have easily protected himself by doing nothing.
The middle book of this trilogy takes us to a dark point, but leaves us with hope that our characters can find a way out into better places. It’s an interesting and tense read, and because many of the characters here don’t appear in the main show, there’s no safety net. Almost any of these characters can be lost, and indeed, Mages do suffer heavy and grievous losses. This is a great book if you’re interested in the Babylon 5 universe, but also a good book if you just enjoy science fiction. It might be difficult to find, as the books are no longer in print. Still, if you can pick up a copy, I think you’ll enjoy it.
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