Babylon 5: Book #1 Voices
  Boxtree paperback, œ4.99 - Author: J Michael Straczynski

                      Reviewed by Sue

The inhabitants of Babylon 5 find themselves in deep trouble
when a convention of telepaths is transferred to the station
following a fatal terrorist bomb blast at their original venue on
Mars.  Bester, leader of the Psi Corps, and telepath Harriman Gray
narrowly escape death during the explosion, and Gray suggests
Babylon 5 as an alternate venue, partly because of the fact that
he would like to get to know Susan Ivanova better!

Talia Winters, B5's resident telepath, organises the conference
rooms and entertainment and is delighted to find herself drawn
into a friendship with Arthur Malten, leader of a powerful group
of commercial telepaths known as The Mix. Indeed, she is very
tempted to leave Babylon 5 and take up a new posting with his
organisation ... if she does a good job organising the conference,
it could do her career a lot of good.

But her ambitions and plans get severely dented when another bomb
blast occurs in one of the conference rooms - one that she left
scant seconds before the explosion. Five people are killed and
others, including Bester, injured. Suspicion falls even more
heavily on her when it is discovered that the device used was in
her bag! Despite her protests of innocence, Bester decides that
she is the guilty party, and though Ivanova and Garibaldi would
like to prove otherwise, there seems little they can do. Taking a
chance, and with help from an unexpected quarter, Talia makes a
break for freedom and heads for Earth where she hopes she can find
evidence against the real guilty parties. But with the Psi Corps
after her as a rogue telepath for killing some of their members,
what chance does she have?

... Of course the obvious answer is 'enough' because she was a
regular member of the B5 team for the first couple of seasons so
it's clear that she isn't going to get killed or imprisoned long
term.  This takes away some of the suspense, but there is enough
else going on in the storyline to keep the reader's attention.
See if _you_ can guess who the bombers are! Is it really down to
Martian terrorists or is there an even more sinister plot?

It's taken me a long time to get into the Babylon 5 universe, but
I enjoyed this first paperback based on the TV series. It remains
to be seen whether they will hold my attention as well as the Star
Trek books do.












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