Legions of Fire, Book I: The Long Night of Centauri Prime - Chapters 6-13

[ruuger]

This is the discussion post for chapters 6-13 of Peter David's Legions of Fire, Book I: The Long Night of Centauri Prime. Spoilers for the whole of the series, including the spin-offs and tie-ins, are allowed here so newbies beware.

Next week, we'll discuss the rest of the book (Part II, chapters 14-22).

MOD NOTE: Since I'll be on my summer vacation for the next few weeks, I've set the posts to appear on schedule but probably won't monitoring the comm very actively, so if the discussion posts fail to appear on Sundays or there some other problems, please send me a PM.

P.S. babylon5_love could use some more contribuors.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I had always wondered about the idea of David Sheridan getting a Keeper instead of John or Delenn. As you said, neither Alliance nor Anla'Shok are hereditary, all you'd be doing is ruining the personal lives of the Sheridan family, and if that's your goal why wait so long?

As I said, I think that's the result of JMS applying a fantasy concept to what's not a fantasy type of story. I mean, I can completely believe the Drakh feeling particularly vengeful towards John and Delenn. (If they're pissed off at Londo for bombing the Shadows on Celini, how must they feel about Sheridan and the nuke on Z'ha'dum? And then Lyta blows up Z'ha'dum, which was her idea, but the Drakh probably think she acted on Sheridan's orders.) So I can even buy them feeling the wish to destroy their personal future in the form of their child (in addition to plotting against humanity in totem, which happens pre-Crusade). However, what I'm struggling with is the idea they would do the David thing instead of, as opposed to in addition to, going after John and/or Delenn themselves, because if you're the Drakh and want to Drakhify the verse long term, and you do have the opportunity to get a Keeper next to two of the most powerful people on the current galactic scene, you go for that.

Unless we want to be unkind and say that Sheridan did such a bad job as President in the first year that the Drakh thought, as they do about Durla in (Peter) David's book: we don't need a Keeper on this guy, he does everything we want him to do anyway!

But the thing about mysterious entities is that they're at their best when they remain mysterious. And the best way to do that is use them sparingly.

I agree, but in David's defense, that particular cat was already out of the bag. Crusade by featuring a Technomage regular in the cast, two episodes featuring other Technomages as guest stars and a storyline building up to the Technomages-were-originally-created-by-Shadows revelation had made the Technomages mainstream, so to speak.

Vir agreeing to work with them is for the next section of the book, but I'm so with you on this subject.