Babylon 5: To Dream in the City of Sorrows (1997)

To Dream in the City of Sorrows (1997)

Author: Kathryn M. Drennan | Page Count: 278

'Under his leadership, the Anla'shok were the most efficient and deadly fighting force the galaxy has ever seen. But Valen also recognized a danger in this. He knew that without an enemy to fight, such a group could become restless and dissatisfied...'

Excluding the novelizations of the TV Movies, City of Sorrows is the only Babylon 5 book that is one hundred percent part of the five year canon. It's fully sanctioned by creator J. Michael Straczynski and is penned by his then wife, Kathryn M. Drennan.

It's the story of what happened to Commander Jeffrey Sinclair after he left the station. It relies heavily on your knowledge of the TV series and as such is stuck between having to remain faithfully tied to it and trying to present something exciting and independently new.

Unfortunately, sandwiched between the potential of the beginning and the very average ending is a middle made up of lots of meh. The dialogue is clunky, the story lacks any real sense of urgency or danger, and most of the people are uninteresting. So unless you found Jeff and his partner Catherine Sakai to be charismatic, then you may feel similarly to how I did during reading.

Marcus Cole's back-story was the only thing that kept me reading, because I really liked him in the series. (Mentioning him isn't spoiler, he's on the cover.)

It's not overly taxing or engaging, but if you've read and enjoyed this kind of pulp tie-in novel before — for any popular TV franchise, not just for B5 — then you can maybe estimate whether or not the content will come close to satisfying your needs before you even venture past the cover.