BPP Novel 3: Blood Oath

The Babylon Project Podcast

The third stand-alone novel is Blood Oath, written by John Vornholt. This is his second and final B5 novel. The print copy was published by Dell in September 1995, and ran 256 pages. The story takes place in 2259, sometime prior to “The Coming of Shadows” (Season 2, Episode 9). This book is not considered canon.

We liked this book, quite a bit. The story was primarily about G’Kar and focused on his attempts to remedy an assassination attempt on his life—actually a third attempt! For fans of the original series, you’ll remember the second attempt was a part of the episode “Parliament of Dreams” (Season 1, Episode 5). In this third attempt, Mi’Ra, the daughter from a rival family on the Narn Homeworld swears a blood oath (the Shon’Kar) to finally avenge her father’s death, the disgracing of his name, and the resultant destruction of her family, all caused by G’Kar as he rose to the Third Circle. Very early in the story, G’Kar is made aware of this intended assassination. He tells no one, and departs on a shuttle which explodes, killing him instantly. Or so it seems. We quickly learn he’s still alive, his death was faked in an effort to stop future assassination attempts, and to get to the Narn Homeworld to remedy the problem.

The rest of the novel happens there, where we get to enjoy a relatively deep and very interesting dive into the Narn Homeworld, many new Narn characters, and layers of the Narn culture. What made this novel stand out more than the first two was the author’s ability to very accurately capture most of the familiar characters, and to make everything feel like it was inspired or even written by JMS. There were a few oddities (like with some of Mike Garibaldi’s behavior), but nothing that was really that bad. At the end of the novel, with things resolved, we also enjoy a very well written surprise when we learn of Londo’s role in helping G’Kar through the struggle of trying to end the Son’Kar.

Of the various themes that ran through the book, some were unique to this story, while others also ran through one or more of the earlier novels. These included an examination of different forms of justice; the differences in how justice plays out within the Narn culture as well as the differences in justice between races; deceit and deception; reconciliation and friendship.

Your hosts definitely enjoyed this book and even described it as a fun story to read. When we rated the book, we ended up with a 4.5, a 4.0, and a 4.5 (out of 5), giving us an overall Boom Scale rating of 4.3.

Please continue reading along and join us next time when we discuss Clark’s Law, by Jim Mortimore.