BPP Novel 7: The Shadow Within

The Babylon Project Podcast

We’ve arrived at the seventh and much-anticipated standalone novel The Shadow Within, by Jeanne Cavelos. And it was worth the wait!

The story takes place just before the Babylon 5 television series pilot episode “The Gathering” and was clearly well researched, and also presumably informed by the author’s familiarity with the characters as we know them from the series. The book was authored and published at a time when Ms. Cavelos would have had access to the first three seasons, and part of the fourth season, of the TV show. It looks like she was as much a fan as we are. The book is considered canon, along with the ninth and final standalone novel.

The novel filled in some missing info for a few key storylines: specifically what happened to Anna Sheridan that resulted in her apparent death, and later the discovery that she was actually working with the Shadows; and also additional information (backstory) related to Captain Sheridan when he was the commander of the Agamemnon prior to taking command of Babylon 5. We watch Sheridan’s career get frustrated by a combination of incompetence among his junior officers, perhaps fueled by something more sinister. With Anna’s story, we learn just how deep her love for John was, and his for her. It made her loss that we learned about in the television series even more heartbreaking. Related, we meet Mr. Morden for the first time (chronologically) and discover he’s actually Dr. Morden. One of the most interesting elements of the story is that we learn to appreciate (and maybe even respect) the character we all love to hate. Seeing Morden as he was before the Shadows took control of him was truly interesting.

As the novel progresses, we bounce between Anna’s and John’s stories. As is the case with good storytelling, each time a segment of Anna’s storyline ends, you hope to hurry through the next segment of John’s story so you can get back to find out what happened. But then when that segment of John’s storyline ends, you can’t wait to race through Anna’s to get back to what’s happening with his situation. The story unfolds quickly as a result, and in the end you feel like you were watching a couple of well-paired episodes, or perhaps what would have made a great Babylon 5 movie.

If you like this novel, you’ll be happy to know Ms. Cavelos is also the author of “The Passing of the Techno-Mages” trilogy: one of the three trilogies we’ll read and review together after we finish with the last standalone novel.

We enjoyed this book very much. Our ratings were a 4.5, a 5.5, and a 5.0 (out of 5), giving us an overall Boom Scale rating of 4.7.

Next up is the penultimate standalone novel, Personal Agendas, by Al Sarrantonio. We’re optimistic that it will be a good experience, even though it doesn’t carry the same positive reputation as The Shadow Within, or the ninth standalone, To Dream in the City of Sorrows. If you’re reading along with us, grab your copy and enjoy!

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Just remember… When there’s no boom today, there’s boom tomorrow. There’s always boom tomorrow!