Legions of Fire, Book I: The Long Night of Centauri Prime - Chapters 14-22

[ruuger]

This is the discussion post for chapters 14-22 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 be discussing chapters 1-5 of the second book.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I.

And thus the first volume ends. I have to admit I misrembered several things; for example, I thought the  "revenge" on Mariel happened here already, and it doesn't. Okay, then I'll discuss the plot point later. Onwards for what actually happens in the rest of this book.

The good: Timov! I was hoping for her most of all, and I was delighted she was in the book. Of course I was all the more frustrated we never see her in the next two volumes until she dies, but just strictly speaking for this particular book, we're good. This includes, it may surprise you to learn, the heartbreaking matter of her banishment. That made character sense to me. Londo had to insure she would never seek him out again, and Timov being Timov, it wouldn't have been enough to banish her. He had to make her well and truly despise him. So yes, that worked for me, as did Londo's revulsion at sharing something as intimate as sex with the Drakh Entire and subject Timov to this against her knowledge and will. No wonder that was the point at which he balked and came up with the banishment idea.  All the scenes before that between Londo and Timov, and Timov and Vir, were a delight.

The bad: so - Senna brings Timov back, inspired by Londo's remark that Timov is the only person on the planet who truly knows him. And then we never, ever see them interact. Nor do we see Timov interact with Mariel, which could have been fascinating. Dear Peter David: in your episode, you gave the three wives conversations with each other. Why do your novels fail the Bechdel test completely? At the very least, giving us scenes showing Timov and Senna establishing a relationship and trying to counter Durla's influence would have made sense.

Vir and Mariel. I suppose you could say this is canonical justified - if you take the last scene of "Sic Transit Vir" as your key point of Vir characterisation. Yes, Vir was affection starved his entire life and has a hangup about anyone finding him worthy of love (the "someone to love, and someone who could actually love somoene like me" from Into The Fire breaks my heart every time I hear it), but he's also Vir with all five seasons and two more years behind him. And especially after the Lyndisti experience, he's not going to overlook the huge question marks about a woman, no matter now attractive she is. So for Vir to be basically his early s2 self and be so grateful a beautiful woman is interested that he doesn't question Mariel falling for him at all, despite knowing Londo nicknamed her "Death" for a reason, strikes me as extremely unlikely. Also, I resent the novel claiming this is what gives Vir his self confidence. Vir in s5 was confident enough to do his own research about the Centauri dead at a point when the entire station hated anyone Centauri and there were attacks on him. A year earlier, he went through the anti Cartagia conspiracy on Centauri Prime which took nerves of steel. He really does have confidence by the time the show ends; he doesn't need a beautiful girlfriend in order to interact with the station personnel in a non shy way.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Ii.

Sidenote: the fact that in the big revelation scene, the detail which convinces Vir that this was indeed a recording of Mariel and not a fake produced by Kane is her casual remark he, Vir, doesn't get further than three was good, though. It's just the kind of nasty personal detail that would work in a situation like this.)

The hm: BLOODY TECHNOMAGES. The circumstances are just enough to make me believe Vir wouldn't outright refuse to get involved with them. But barely. Because seriously, a mysterious group offering help and cryptic hints and talking about Vir having a greater destiny? Been there, done that when it was Morden and Londo. As Vir knows better than anyone.

How irresponsible is what Kane does to Vir by asking him to name drop Shiv'kala to Londo? I mean, it works if you want to postulate the technomages regarded Vir as expendable at this point, not as important as testing their theory was anyway. Which, okay, fits with general ruthlessness and manipulativeness among cryptic know it alls in the B5verse from the Vorlons downwards, but then don't try to sell me in later volumes on this bunch being well meaning and caring for Vir, David.  And while we're at it: Londo managing to convince the Drakh not to kill Vir after the name drop isn't working for me at all. I mean, I'm all for Londo doing that, but you don't justify it convincingly  within the novel. (The way JMS convincingly justified Londo finding a way not to kill the seer in "The Shadow of his Dreams".) From this point onwards, Vir is an incredible security risk. Even if Londo in the hour after it happened is drunk enough to convincingly threaten Shiv'kala with a sword, what's stopping Shiv'kala from keeping Londo immobilized later and have Vir killed then? There is only the Doylist reason that Vir has main character privilege. On a Watsonian level, there was nothing to convince me Vir would have ever been allowed to leave the palace alive, let alone Centauri Prime.

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

he's also Vir with all five seasons and two more years behind him.

Something I've noticed about Peter David's writing - he frequently completely ignores character development or reverts characters to a much earlier state. In his (dire) post-Nemesis TNG novel “Before Dishonor”, among other issues, he wrote Worf as a unthinking brute, seemingly ignoring every appearance of the character since “Encounter at Farpoint”, and even in his better TNG novels, he had a tendency to write Data as a season-one naïve chatterbox.

Maybe this is just a habit he picked up dealing with Star Trek’s restrictions on how little tie-in novels were allowed to go beyond extended canon, or maybe he just stops paying attention to shows after the first season or so, but it really makes him a terrible choice for any sort of tie-in that’s meant to be extending the character’s stories, and it’s one of the big flaws that plagued the Centauri trilogy…

[selenak.livejournal.com]

You have a point about David's writing, and I agree that the restrictions originally placed on ST tie-in writers are a likely explanation of how that tick developed. (Sidenote: am surprised he wrote about Worf at all, though - I thought only Keith de Candido was allowed to do that?:) To be fair, fanfic does that a lot, too. The most recent fandom of mine where I noticed this was Merlin where three quarters of the fanfic characterisation ways stays in eternal early s1 land, but a lot of fanfic writers in a lot of fandoms do it; presumably because they imprinted on the characters via their introductions and/or don't like later developments. The difference is that they don't get paid to develop said characters further. Which Peter David was, one assumes, with the Centauri trilogy.

Of course he'd say he does develop Vir further, with Certain Events in the next volume, but given his initial Vir is already in the wrong mode for Vir's timeline...

[swashbuckler332.livejournal.com]

Confidence in other areas of one's life does not automatically translate into confidence of matters intimate and sexual relationships. There are very different pressures at work, and people often compartmentalize such things. Vir was somebody who for most of his life was an outsider in these matters, his gradual maturation and assertiveness notwithstanding.