mileage may vary, depending on how much the reader appreciates this series' most mysterious character: the often reborn/once a religious fanatic/once mileage may vary, depending on how much the reader appreciates this series' most mysterious character: the often reborn/once a religious fanatic/once a gun-slinging secret agent/currently a poor little rich boy/and cybernetic pirate/and always horny homo sapien-adjacent being now known as Alec Checkerfield. he's my favorite character in The Company, so I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which is basically a slow lifting of all the veils shrouding this bizarre and wonderful and surprisingly relatable fellow. the series' protagonist Mendoza is an equally fantastic character and she deserves a romantic lead with all of the trimmings.
past entries in this series have been more... secretive. they have concealed their true natures. ostensibly a science fictional series that spends time in multiple past eras, they are also each something quite different. the first, a romance; the second, a comedy of manners; the third, a memento mori; the fourth, a cold case mystery. this fifth book is a shift, as it is a nearly-straightforward biography. if a reader isn't interested in the life of Alec Checkerfield (or his prior iterations, Nicholas Harpole and Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax), then this book will be a drag.
for me, it was tons of fun. Baker's style remains light and breezy. her primary target also remains: hypocritical group-thinkers who make decisions that impact lives but eschew all responsibility for those decisions. in The Company series, they are literally "the Company" - company men and women. in prior books, these villains do their villainous thing while only being glimpsed briefly, in scenes where their laughable softness are highlighted. we finally get to meet a group of these group-thinkers and they are as pathetic (and as amusing) as one might imagine.
as always, Baker has an agonizing devastation in store for the reader. she loves to make a light fluffy cake, one with a secret filling full of nails, razors, barbed wire, the annihilation of the human spirit. but still light and fluffy!
An enjoyable collection of short stories that fills out the time-traveling, mystery-laden world of The Company. Written in Baker's breezy, casual, andAn enjoyable collection of short stories that fills out the time-traveling, mystery-laden world of The Company. Written in Baker's breezy, casual, and very charming style with trace notes of the sorrow, loss, and tragedies to come.
One amusing thing I noticed: Kage Baker was a Grouchy Old Man! She just could not stand a world of progressive liberalism that checks and attacks the things she took for granted in her life: enjoying competition and other potentially violent things; smoking and drinking and eating meat and other fatty, unhealthy foods; not getting an award for just showing up; not being afraid that the human touch is usually inappropriate and possibly toxic. I wonder what she would have thought about #MeToo. Depending on the story, the particular stance, and how ardent she is about not liking these things, her perspective varies from rather eye-rolling to completely understandable. I guess your outlook on her outlook depends on your own point of view.
My favorite story was written for this collection: "The Queen in Yellow". A fun romp on an archaeological dig in 1912 Egypt featuring sweet, optimistic cyborg Literature Preservationist Lewis and his sinister, impassive handler, the cyborg Executive Facilitator Lady Kiu. The story includes a tomb unearthed, genius unbound, plans gone awry, strange disguises and madcap chases, secrets revealed, and Lewis in his skivvies racing across a midnight desert at inhuman speed with a mummy case on his back.
Coming to the foreground is the enigmatic child Alec Checkerfield, who eventually becomes the love interest for the series' sometimes-heroine Mendoza and the source of one of its strangest mysteries. Who is this "Adonai" - a person who apparently lives and dies in multiple lives throughout time, causing trouble and breaking Mendoza's heart not once but twice? Who is this strange lad Alec, a little Lord, a boy who can control computers, free artificial intelligences, towers over his peers, hungers for love from his absent parents, and yearns to be a pirate? No complete answers here but it is clear that he is both a Black Project and a White Knight. Whatever that means!...more
hello there, little cold case file. i see you! you are trying to hide, aren't you? you are hidden in plain sight, snuggled between a history of humanihello there, little cold case file. i see you! you are trying to hide, aren't you? you are hidden in plain sight, snuggled between a history of humanity spanning the course of several centuries and a labyrinthine conspiracy thriller that crosses time and space. your siblings are so big and impressive, you could have been overlooked. the history so mordant, even acidic, charting the cyclical nature of sheep-like humanity as the species slowly cycles towards a zero sum game where all things are rendered tediously equal and vanilla - while keeping innate human hypocrisy intact. the conspiracy thriller so intriguing and dangerous, so mind-boggling in its potential scope, so deliciously frustrating as it keeps its major players carefully hidden. the two of them almost take up the whole stage. they both certainly kept me turning the pages in excitement.
but i see you there with them, little cold case file. you are the heart of this novel - the strongest so far of the series. you are a little file all about a romance, and a disappearance, carried by the most romantic of your cyborgs. Literature Specialist Lewis, who writes his stories and searches fruitlessly for answers to a mystery long buried. buried perhaps a millennia ago. Lewis won't let your case fade: he longs to find the long-lost lovers - perhaps banished, perhaps dead, perhaps secretly alive and defiant. bookish, loyal Lewis, in love with the idea of love. your ardent supporter... will his reward be only to have his name added to your pages, whisked away to who knows where, another missing, another mystery, added to the list of the lost?
the history and the thriller have much sound and fury but you, little cold case file, are what made this great novel so plaintive, so memorable. i found you; hopefully Mendoza and Nicholas and sweet Lewis will be found as well, some day....more
hello there, little memento mori. i see you! you are trying to hide, aren't you? your sepulchral contemplation is well-disguised. who would think to lhello there, little memento mori. i see you! you are trying to hide, aren't you? your sepulchral contemplation is well-disguised. who would think to look into a Western of all things to find you? to be specific: a western in dusty, blazingly hot Old California, a stage set with horses and stagecoaches, drunken and lovelorn cowboy trash, a vengeful teen, a traveling salesman with all sorts of oddments to sell, a vivacious yet coldblooded whore, an eccentric young cowpoke who loves birds, the American Civil War looming in the background, intrigue from those dastardly Englishmen in the foreground. who cares that several of those characters are actually immortal cyborgs? it's a Western! a rather elegiac one, with thoughtful characters less over the top than those descriptions may sound. Kage Baker gamely plays along, stuffing her story with the appropriate western ephemera, as well as legends of a Hollywood to come and a screening of certain timeless classics - delivered from the future! her amiable approach, with prose lacking bustle and fuss and a narrative that appears fairly straightforward, made it a bit hard to recognize you.
but you are there nonetheless, little memento mori. a western is actually a fitting locale for you - the genre is obsessed with death and the passing of people, things, and ways. you are a fine memento mori, there's no need to hide! our protagonist lost her one true love in a prior novel and spends all of this one mourning him, brooding over him, fantasizing about him and all that he meant to her - that is, when she's not moodily contemplating the pathos of the human life, destined to live and die in a handful of years, so much dust in the wind. 'tis an apposite topic for an immortal cyborg to ponder. mortals are born to die....more
hello there, little comedy of manners. i see you! you are trying to hide, aren't you? but your heart is not in it, i think. and all the better for it.hello there, little comedy of manners. i see you! you are trying to hide, aren't you? but your heart is not in it, i think. and all the better for it. you are quite a charming comedy of manners, and there is no shame in that. you are a tale that features pretension punctured, amusing miscommunications, servants who say the correct thing while silently conveying their disdain, bureaucratic bosses who are childlike in their sheltered idealism, faux naifs slash noble savages who turn out to be neither naive nor savage, a Company man whose job is to facilitate incredible change by using the simple tools of misdirection and misunderstanding. much as the immortal cyborgs who populate your tale, you've gussied yourself up in an ornate outfit full of ruffles and flourishes... time travel! secret plots lasting a millenia! Native American mythology made real! bloodthirsty monotheists on the horizon! sex with nubile underage lasses! ritualistic entertainment that turns out to be an extended penis joke! Wile E. Coyote! your prose is polished and professional. your characters have depth and genuinely tragic backstories. your dialogue is straight out of the crassest of sitcoms - and is often really hilarious. your outfit is surprisingly complex and layered given your true nature: an arch and highly amusing albeit seriously tweaked comedy of manners. all that wit plus a happy ending! or is that really a happy ending?
the second book in the series and it is obvious that Baker is building something rather wonderful. a minor note work, nothing i'll read again - but definitely some kind of wonderful. i bet this series just gets better and better....more
hello there, little romance. i see you! you are trying to hide, aren't you? well you picked some good camouflage, i must say. you've concealed yourselhello there, little romance. i see you! you are trying to hide, aren't you? well you picked some good camouflage, i must say. you've concealed yourself within a fairly operatic setting: the tale of an immortal teenage cyborg employed by a secretive and futuristic Company, sent on missions in our far-flung past to save extinct plants, waiting for the day that your future finally catches up with your employer's apparently golden present. it is quite a setting, i almost didn't see you there! you are surrounded by perfectly accomplished elizabethan period detail, some deep themes about religion vs. free will, some sophisticated ideas about predestination and predetermination. you are written in a clear, careful, unsentimental way. but there you are, little romance, romantic as can be, perhaps thinking that you will be overlooked simply because of the grandeur of your surroundings.
but now that i've found you, never fear - lay your insecurities to rest! you are a fine little romance, touching and subtle and carefully wrought. your lovers are wonderful creations and their love feels true. there are many good things to be said about a perfectly accomplished romance, so you have nothing to be ashamed of! your camouflage, the ongoing story that i am eager to follow - it is an absorbing place in which you've hidden. but you are worthy for what you are, little romance. stand proud!...more
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