Synopsis: Alfred Bester decides to move from all these off-worlds planets to Paris on Earth. It won't be easy to get there, but it is easier to hide between all those minds, in a familiar environment. He manages to get to Earth with some help, and there decides to stop running. Become a total new him, and he even finds someone who loves him again. Review: Alfred Bester is done with running from one place to the other. He travels to Paris, where he decides to leave his life of luxury and he moves into this small hotel, in one of the not so great neighborhood of Paris. They even have a local gang, which Bester meets on his first trip through the neighborhood. He solves the problem, and even makes sure that Louise’s Hotel is having better times then it had before. He falls in love with Louise, and shows her a different side of life. Meanwhile, he still has to check if no one knows who he is, or what he is. Small problems like a street artist drawing his portrait, or his picture beside his column in the local newspaper will be enough to get unwanted attraction. Things seem to go just nicely. And he decides that he is a total new Bester, one that would like to live with Louise till the end of his days - who has left his past behind him. But there is this one individual named Garibaldi, who will never stop hunting Bester till he is dead and buried. And Garibaldi has a lead that Bester is in Paris, and he wont let him go this time. It’s the final book of the trilogy, and I thought that it would take place on Babylon 5, where the second book had ended. But instead we see an old Bester on the run. The last member of PSI Corps, with a new goal in his life: to simple stay alive. The trilogy has told us how the Corps started, and how it ends with Bester. But we miss a great part of the time line, when they don’t tell us about the Shadow Wars. What happened to the alien artifacts we hear about? And why the Vorlons are there, helping human kind evolve into stronger telepaths. Why the Corps performed medical tests on their own. In short, there are still much questions unanswered. And I hope that there will be other books answering some of them.
Title: Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester |
1/6/05
