BPP Legions of Fire #1: The Long Night of Centauri Prime

The Babylon Project Podcast

If you were with us when we reviewed the stand-alone novels, you’ll remember each novel seemed to be a roll of the dice. Would it be good, bad, a mixed bag? We never really knew until we dove in. Well, we finished the Psi Corps trilogy (which was powerful!) and now we’ve moved to the Legions of Fire (aka the Centauri) trilogy, but with no concerns. We finished the first book in the trilogy, The Long Night of Centauri Prime, and have no doubt this set of books will be as powerful as the first trilogy we read.

The Long Night of Centauri Prime, as with all three of the Legions of Fire novels, were written by Peter David, and are all based on a script written by JMS. The story opens in 2262 with events that were depicted in the television episode “The Fall fo Centauri Prime” (S5:E18). The end of the book takes place shortly before the events in the fourth Babylon 5 television movie, A Call to Arms, set in 2266. Readers should keep in mind there are also events at the end of the book that occur in 2267, creating what appears to be a bit of a continuity issue. That said, the story in the novel doesn’t harm to the original series or other canonical works. So dive in and enjoy the story.

While a lot happens, involving a significant number of characters, this is primarily Londo’s story, perhaps best summed up as the continuing tragedy of (now) Emperor Londo Mollari.

Londo is on the throne, but not alone: he is shadowed by a Drakh handler named Shiv’kala, and subject to a “Keeper”, a living being created by the Drakh. This Keeper lives parasitically on Londo, attached to his body and fully entangled with his nervous system. Long is never alone, even mentally, other than when he gets intoxicated enough to put the Keeper to sleep. As you’ll recall, at this time the Centauri Republic was at odds with the IA, and the two ultimately went to war, which the Centauri lost. Londo is ruling over a devistated planet as a result of the war.

Under the thumb of the Drakh, Londo has little latitude to resist and for the most part can only watch his beloved world being turned into a police state. The Drakh also have another willing and power-hungry Centauri named Durla, whom they place in a subordinate, but powerful Ministerial position within Londo’s government. He begins to manipulate those around him in order to create and gain power at a level that Londo doesn’t fully realize at this point.

Centauri Prime is rebuilding, but sadly this is occurring under the secret direction of the Drakh, the local puppets of the Shadows. However, their goal isn’t to simply restore Centauri Prime to its previous level of affluence. Rather, their intent is to use the rebuilt Centauri as a militarily powerful race, to attack the IA. Their specific goal is to destroy Earth and kill President Sheridan for his role in defeating the Shadows and pushing them out of known space. While the attack on the IA will be conventional, they don’t intend to use the Centauri military to destroy Earth. Instead, we learn the Drakh are secretly creating a massive weapon that can only be described as a “Planet Killer”. Late in the book, thanks to the help of a small group of Technomages, Vir learns of the Drakh scheme and their direct control over Londo, to include the name of his Drakh handler. It almost costs him his life.

We loved the book. As we hoped, it set the stage for what can only be an amazing second book in what is unfolding to be an even better series than the Psi Corps trilogy. Our ratings were a 4.9, 4.5 and 5 (out of 5), giving us an overall Boom Scale rating of 4.8.

Next time we get together, we’ll discuss the second book in the Legions of Fire trilogy: Armies of Light and Dark. We hope you read along with us, listen to our discussion, and comment on the podcast to join in on the discussion.

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