The Shadow Within by Jeanne Cavelos

The Shadow Within Reviews

• 
  Mike (the Paladin)

  In 1993 the pilot episode for a new TV series idea premiered. The series as such began in 1994. Despite jokes from the mouth of Sheldon of Big Bang Theory this was one of the best (if not the best) science fiction series ever on TV. It was ground breaking, original filled with strong characters, based on an interesting premise, conceived and written as a "novel for television".
  
  It still airs in Europe, the UK and other parts of the world. Why is it so scarce in the US? Because it's caught in a legal wrangle at Warner Brothers who apparently has a strangle hold on the rights and won't allow syndication or media use of the title. It's a classic case of cutting off the nose to spite the face as there is still a strong fan base and if the series were to appear in syndication an entirely new generation of fans would come into being. I own the DVDs of the series, so far as I know the only way to view this amazing series in the US.
  
  So, to the novel. First many of you may wonder (if you're keeping track) why I read the 7th in the series first. It's because of the "first series" of novels based on Bab 5 only #7 and #9 are considered canon. I have the others and plan to read them but I'll read these first.
  
  I recently sent for used copies of these and the other Bab 5 novels.
  
  This story covers something fans of the series will know about in general, the apparent last contact between Captain John Sheridan and his wife Anna. It also recounts the prophesied awakening of The Shadows.
  
  While the book isn't some literary classic it's well written and readable. You get an interesting story and for the Bab 5 fans the people you meet here harken fairly true to the ones we already know from the series.
  
  This is a good novel on and in it's own right though I think reading it may be a sort of "gateway drug" to the Bab 5 universe. So...recommended and welcome. If you aren't familiar with said universe you have something great to look forward to.
• 
  Todd

  Great stand alone book set in the Babylon 5 universe. The book is considered 100% cannon by Babylon 5 creator, J. Michael Straczynski, it tells the back stories of Anna Sheridan and Morden (how they ended up on Z'ha'dum, to be future collaborators with the Shadows), and of John Sheridan as commander of the Agamemnon on his mission to save Babylon 5 from an attempt by the Homeguard to blow it up. The novel is also spiced with scenes of Ambassador Delenn, Jeffrey Sinclair, Garibaldi, and the scenes of Kosh set inside a Vorlon ship are excellent and make fantastic counterpoints to later descriptions of the Shadows themselves.
  
  Great book, great story telling. A must for any Babylon 5 fan!
  
  The four star rating is its general rating, however within the Babylon 5 franchise, this book definitely deserves 5 stars.
• 
  Nicholas

  Despite some slightly dodgy spots, this was a fairly engaging book. Unlike the others so far, this one takes place at the dawn of Babylon 5 and deals with Anna and John Sheridan. Specifically, his assumption of command of the Agamemnon, and Anna's journey to Alpha Omega 3. While some of the interpersonal stuff was a bit iffy, the author did a good job of keeping AO3 tense and spooky, and also handled Morden nicely.
  
  I'm pleased with this novel.
• 
  Dan

  Very good, even as a re-read.
• 
  Adam Whitehead

  November, 2256. Anna Sheridan, an archaeologist working for Interplanetary Expeditions, is investigating an ancient alien artefact recovered from a remote planet. When the artefact scrambles the brain of a telepath, Psi Corps becomes very interested in where the device came from and what it means. Improbably, Interplanetary Expeditions rapidly discovers a candidate for the machine's homeworld - "Alpha Omega III", on the rim of known space - and dispatches a ship, the Icarus, to investigate. Anna joins the crew and discovers a seething mess of corporate espionage, competing interests and hidden secrets hinting at how this planet was discovered so quickly. Anna feels the only person she can trust is an archaeo-linguist suffering a profound grief and trauma: Dr. Morden.
  
  When J. Michael Straczynski started planning his Babylon 5 television series in the late 1980s, he had the idea of creating the first-ever genuinely multimedia franchise. His idea was for the tie-in novels and comic books to be just as important and canonical to the setting as any episode of the television series (Star Wars later tried to do something similar with its Expanded Universe, which ended in failure). In the event this proved challenging: the publishers did not want to spend a lot of money on quality writers and their production schedules for the books was ridiculous. John Vornholt had a month apiece to write his two books in the series and found that so tough he refused to write any more.
  
  After the first six novels came out and, with the honourable exceptions of Vornholt's Voices and Jim Mortimore's Clark's Law, turned out to be terrible, there was a reset of the line. Straczynski assigned the next three book outlines and premises personally and tried to find better writers. The result gave us another awful novel - Betrayals by the normally-reliable S.M. Stirling - but it did finally provide two books which finally fulfilled the potential of the idea by giving us novels that told stories the TV series was unable to. These two books - The Shadow Within and To Dream in the City of Sorrows - are both considered fully canon for the TV show and are pretty decent SF novels in their own right.
  
  The Shadow Within is the more self-contained of the two and can be read without any pre-knowledge of the Babylon 5 setting, especially since the titular station and the regular TV characters barely appear. Instead, the focus is on Anna Sheridan and the mission to Alpha Omega III. This storyline is well-played, although modern readers may draw parallels with the 2012 movie Prometheus. Fortunately, The Shadow Within is far better-written and more plausible in how it depicts the behaviour of the team of scientists and engineers. Jeanne Cavelos is an actual former NASA astrophysicist, which helps with the description and outfitting of a scientific mission.
  
  The book also has a significant subplot, with Captain John Sheridan assuming command of the Omega-class destroyer Agamemnon. To his horror, the crew is lackadaisical and insubordinate, the result of the corruption of the previous captain. This subplot sees Sheridan having to uncover what happened with the previous captain that corrupted so many of the officers and trying to bring the crew up to Earthforce standards, just as the ship is dispatched on an urgent mission. This subplot is pretty decent but feels a little incongruous when contrasted to the Anna story, which is much more interesting.
  
  This storyline also begins to cross-bleed into the horror genre, especially when the Icarus reaches the alien planet to find it is not as dead as was previously indicated. Strange things start happening, crewpeople start going missing, people start behaving weirdly and a growing feeling of doom envelops the story. But there's some big surprises here even for seasoned Babylon 5 fans. The ending in particular transforms Mr. Morden from an evil snake-oil salesman into a much more tragic figure, destroyed by circumstance and grief, which makes you re-examine the character from the TV series.
  
  The Shadow Within (****) is a decent and solid - if rather short - SF novel which works well as a Babylon 5 tie-in and as an introduction to the entire franchise for newcomers. It also serves a prequel to Cavelos's later Passing of the Techno-Mages Trilogy, which picks up on some of the story threads left dangling from this novel and the TV series. The book is available in the UK and USA.
• 
  John Kaess

  Having recently finished watching the entire TV series of Babylon 5 and most of the movies, i wanted to read a few of the books which others said helped to flesh out the story arcs a bit. This is book 7 of the 9 stand alone books written about Babylon 5. There are also 3 trilogies of stories. My research showed that book 7 and book 9 along with the 3 trilogies are considered to be canon to the series, as well as being well written and helping to fill out story pieces.
  
  This book was available at the library and so is the first of the Babylon 5 books i've read. I wasn't disappointed. The book focuses mainly on the story of the Icarus which journeyed to Z'ha'dum with John Sheridan's wife Anna aboard before the dedication of Babylon 5. It also intertwines pieces of story about John Sheridan and Jeff Sinclair and their activities during this same time period. I think i most enjoyed seeing John Sheridan and Jeff Sinclair prior to their arcs in the TV series. It felt good, and helped make a bit more meaningful the change in leadership which occurred on Babylon 5.
  
  If you enjoyed the TV series, you'll enjoy this book.
• 
  Rob Cook

  Calluses!!!! The author has a weird obsession with calluses in this book. I lost tracl of how many times character's hands were described.
  A large part of the book didn't feel very 'Babylon 5', the techno babble in the Anna Sheridan parts felt more like Star Trek.
  The brief segments on Babylon 5 featuring Commander Sinclair were a nice surprise, a shame that these weren't expanded on.
  Overall though, I really enjoyed this.
• 
  Jennifer Baratta

  You get the author idea of what happened to Anna Sheridan. A different story from what happened on the show.
• 
  Gary Gillen

  The Shadow Within by Jeanne Cavelos is a tie-in novel for the Babylon 5 TV show. It tells the background to three stories that were not covered in the show. What happened to Anna Sheridan at Z'Ha'dum, John Sheridan taking command as the captain of the Agamemnon, and the events surrounding the dedication of Babylon 5. The novel brings these three stories together. Can Anna escape Z’Ha’dum, can John defeat a plot to destroy Babylon 5, and will Commander Sinclair keep order on Babylon 5?
  Shadow Within by Jeanne Cavelos tells a great origin story for John and Anna Sheridan. The ending was perfect and sad but linked up seamlessly with the TV show. The reader knows something that was not known before reading the book, and that was the purpose to add this novel to the lore of the show.
  It surprised me when Kosh appears in Chapter 11 and calls Delenn. The first ten chapters were all in either Anna or John’s POV. The author added Sinclair and Garibaldi in Chapter 12. There are only 18 Chapters in the novel, so these characters are late additions to the story. Garibaldi’s part would have hardly been a “C” story in the TV show.
  I would have liked to see the Babylon 5 crew through John Sheridan’s eyes. Put him inside Babylon 5, rather than having him watch the dedication. I think that would have been more interesting than seeing Garibaldi put down a lessor plot from inside the station. Keep the novel as a novel of Anna and John before we meet them on the TV show.
  
• 
  Elspeth Artifex

  excellent book explaining what happened in better episodes
• 
  Kristian Bjørkelo

  For a tie-in novel, The Shadow Within is pretty good. Filling in the blanks in a story already told by characters in a television show can be challenging. It's easy to just phone it in, relying on the reader being a fan of the series and being able to inject the character with life based on earlier experience. Cavelos doesn't do that. She delivers a story that touches on all the parts already mentioned by the characters, and manage to expand upon it in a way that makes for an interesting read.
  
  Especially getting to know Morden before he became the manipulative asshole that he is in the TV-series kept me reading this book. That, and Sheridan's attempts to get the crew of his new command to work is what makes this book stand out.
  
  Recommended for any fan of Babylon 5 who wishes there were more stories. And don't we all? Really?
• 
  Chuck

  More SciFi fun!!! ;-) The novel does a nice job filling in the details of John Sheridan's former wife, the archeologist Anna Sheridan, and her tragic encounters with Shadow technology, on Earth and with the Icarus team on the remote planet "Alpha Omega 3" (better known to us as the Shadow homeworld, "Z'ha'dum"). Cavelos manages a somewhat sympathetic portrayal of Anna's colleague Morden, as another victim of the menacing Shadows. Less interesting is the concurrent story of Sheridan himself as captain of the space destroyer, Agamemnon. Cavelos handles the military culture aspects well, but the terrain is far more familiar SF space fare. Hard to compete with the allure and mystery of the enigmatic Shadows.
• 
  Mikael Kuoppala

  A solid B5 novel that's full of interesting background information about Anna Sheridan and her tragic journey on the Icarus, with some attention on the character of Morden. Both are characters of intrigue who didn’t get enough screen time in the series.
  
  The plot is mostly a recount of what has been established before and in all honestly the novel could have used a few more original ideas and surprises. Nonetheless, it was interesting to read more about Anna Sheridan, Morden and their connection to the planet Za'ha'dum and the shadows.
  
  A good read that offers essential information regarding the TV series. And that pretty much compensates for a few weak points in the storytelling, which aren't that incriminating anyway.
• 
  Daniel O'donovan

  This was an interesting novel but didn't go far enough. The parts on the Agamemnon worked well but the Anna Sheridan parts were less interesting. I of course knew where the story would end and expected it to finish with Anna being sent to Babylon 5. This would also have included Morden being prepared for his 'Signs and Portents' mission. It could have even shown how he got the 'eye' back for Londo.
  
  One strange omission was that there was no mention of Justin. I know JMS says that he came to Za'ha'dum later than the Icarus but the story stops before his arrival.
  
  In conclusion the novel fails because it doesn't say much more than the series. It shows the crew landing on Za'ha'dum and some of what happened but doesn't go into Anna and Morden formally working for the Shadows.
  
  
• 
  Thomas Kelly

  NOTE: For fans of the television series Babylon 5, this is possibly 4 star novel. It isn't as much of a must-read as To Dream in the City of Sorrows. Not that it is written by a lesser author. I don't think that at all. But the story itself isn't quite as grand, or more accurately, not as pivitol. In my opinion, the itch that The Shadow Within scratches isn't as intense as that which answers the question of what happened to Jeffrey Sinclair after he was transferred to Minbar? And, of course, that is answered in To Dream in the City of Sorrows.
  
  Finally, I honestly don't feel there would be any appeal for readers that do not follow the television show.
• 
  Lonnie

  This Babylon 5 tie-in tells the story of Anna Sheridan and her eventual enslavement by the Shadows on Z'Ha'Dum. We learn the details of last journey of the Icarus and its reasons for going to the Shadows' home world.
  
  One of the better of the original nine B5 tie-in novels from Dell Publishing.
• 
  Daniel Kukwa

  A B5 book that fills one of the more interesting continuity holes...and manages to bring us to its tragic yet inevitable end with considerable style & sadness. Anna Sheridan's thoughts, as she becomes the core of a Shadow ship, are particularly terrifying...
  
• 
  Kelly

  I loved this book..... It filled in alot of blanks about what happened to Anna and the 'Icarus' on Z'ha'dum. The story was well written making it possible to visualise what I was reading. One of the better books of this series I have read so far.
• 
  F.J. Hansen

  Wonderfully written. Jeanne does an excellent job connecting all the threads involving Anna Sheridan, Mr. Morden, and Z'ha'dum. It shows that she really did her homework
• 
  Myriad

  I liked the bits with Anna and Morden and Z'ha'dum. A little more fleshing out of those characters and the Shadow technology, which was interesting. The Sheridan plot was rather meh and didn't add much to my understanding of the character or the world.