To Dream in the City of Sorrows

by Kathryn M. Drennan

Published by Dell Publishsing

Books based on TV shows are usually not as good as the series itself. This book is a great exception. It is as good and as interesting as any episode of the series Babylon 5. I think this is a must for anybody who is a fan of the show.

This book is at a tie for first place with "The Shadow Within" (#7), and in some ways it's even better. That's because #7, although very interesting, did not have as many questions from the series answered as this one. "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" has more answers than any other book I've read. Here are some of the questions that the show doesn't answer, but the book does:

What happened to Sinclair when he was on Minbar?
How did he become from ambassador to Entil`zha (Ranger One)?
What happened to Sinclair's fiance, Catherine Sakai?
What happened to the Minbari leader?
Did Sinclair start the new Rangers from scratch, or did he just take over and improve them.
What exactly happened to Marcus Cole's brother?
How did Marcus and his brother join the Rangers?
How was Marcus before he became a Ranger?
How was Sinclair prepared to assume the role of Valen?

And those aren't the only questions answered.

The story is very well written. You can imagine the action scenes very clearly. The action is very good, and even during the parts where things are much calmer you can't stop reading.

I liked how they showed what Marcus felt about Sinclair being the Minbari prophet Valen. In the show, it was clear that Marcus was shocked when he found out. Now, in this novel, you can read all his thoughts about the situation and you can see that once, he and Sinclair worked together and were good friends. Here you understand that the shock isn't because he found out a famous person has a very important destiny one thousand years in the past, but because he found this out about a close friend and leader.

In short, if you like Babylon 5, you must buy this. On the other hand, if you don't watch the series you'll have a very hard time following what's going on.