Babylon 5: Voices 1 [Mass Market Paperback]

The plot concerns the Psi Corp convention being held on Babylon 5 after their original location on Mars is blown up. During the convention another bombing takes place and Talia Winters (Babylon 5's resident commercial telepath) becomes the prime suspect. Talia manages to escape from Babylon 5 as she attempts to clear her name. Talia is a fugitive being chased by Psi Corp, the military, the police and Michael Garibaldi (Security Chief on Babylon 5). Garibaldi is desperate to find her before any of the other entities, especially Psi Corp, find her.

I found the scenes on Babylon 5 at the start of the novel very good. There was a lot of humor, the interaction between Captain Sheridan, Commander Ivanova and Garibaldi were terrific. There were also some very humorous parts as Garibaldi plots to keep the telepaths from Psi Corp visiting Down Below.

However, when the book left the station it got much less interesting. The scenes on Earth while important to the plot, were not very interesting. Talia's encounter with a tribe of anglos living as Native Americans in the Native American southwest was sort of interesting, but not much was done with it.

All in all this is a good book, but not a great one. If you've never seen the television series Babylon 5, you may find it interesting. If you've seen a few episodes, you'd probably enjoy the book. If you are a die-hard fan of the series, you may like it, but try to remember that it was written early in the series run and don't expect fully fleshed out characters and situations.

The main idea and plot is very good and had a lot of potential that was wasted. However the major weaknesses was the chracterisations of the main 'cast' Mr. Garibaldi, Talia & Bester. The second problem was to me the wrap up being done too sudden and quickly. It was as though the writer was given a fixed number of pages and about 90% through realised he did not have many pages left and decided to squeeze everything in instead of rewriting for better pacing. I think the resolution should have been spread across at least another 20 pages or some editing of some of the earlier chapters of some unneccessary writing.

All in all worth a read but not a keeper, maybe a rewrite was in order and this book could have been a 5 star rating instead of 3-3 1/2 that I think it is now.

The juvenile style of writing, and the way it tries to appeal to juvenile sensibilities, is the real problem with this novel, though. Characters speak in exclamation points; heck, there are exclamation points scattered all over the place. Some things come across as purely puerile. Garibaldi recognizes Talia by spotting her rear end in the crowd. A bomb mangles Bester's butt. Is there a fixation here, or what?

The sad thing is that there are some decent concepts here, but the execution is just terrible. I think the author misjudged his audience; the problems are far too severe to be just the result of over-hasty writing. The lack of subtlety in the writing -- again an artifact of a misjudged audience, I think -- also reduces some of the interesting implications of the whole "telepath problem".

This book's only worth it if you're a hard-core fan.