At Cahuenga Pass, in a stagecoach inn on the road to Los Angeles, Mendoza meets her new cyborg colleagues in this third novel of the Company. In t...
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Jun 23, 2009
Sandi
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There's something interesting about reading a book that's the third in a series of which you've read later installments. I've read two of the books that come after Mendoza in Hollywood, so I knew where this book was going. However, I had no idea how it was going to get there. Baker managed to keep me guessing even though I knew what was going to happen. Her story telling abilities are terrific. I even noticed a bit of foreshadowing of later novels. Mendoza in Hollywood is by far the best o
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Aug 20, 2011
Cassiangrey
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The third book in the series.
Here we go again, looking at things from Mendoza's perspective. This is nearly as difficult to read as the first book. The only difference is that's she stopped with her teenage woes and is now moaning about her lost love. She probably spends 75% of her internal dialog talking about how she hates humans and misses her boyfriend from the first book.
If I wasn't so into history and fascinated by the facts in the book I would have put it down long ago.
I More...
Here we go again, looking at things from Mendoza's perspective. This is nearly as difficult to read as the first book. The only difference is that's she stopped with her teenage woes and is now moaning about her lost love. She probably spends 75% of her internal dialog talking about how she hates humans and misses her boyfriend from the first book.
If I wasn't so into history and fascinated by the facts in the book I would have put it down long ago.
I More...
Jun 25, 2010
Lady
rated it: 
The third installment of Kage Baker's "The Company" series is certainly a treat! Mendoza is back and this time she in the Wild West, Los Angeles to be exact, where everyone packs a gun and the mentally off-kilter run free. Between holding reel film movie screenings with other immortals, going door-to-door pedling merchandise with an anthropologist, living with a crazy young cyborg obsessed with birds, and occaisionnally getting some botanical work done, Mendoza still dreams about Nicho
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Feb 18, 2010
Phoenixfalls
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This third novel in the Company series reverts to Mendoza's first-person narration, and the transition did not go entirely smoothly. Mendoza is still far more self-centered than Joseph, and that comes through her narration. We saw in Sky Coyote that Joseph wants her that way because he fears for her safety, but after being in the head of a character who is constantly paying attention to those around him and to events at large it's frustrating to come crashing back to Mendoza bitterness, self-pit
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Jan 27, 2010
Hester
rated it:
This is not your typical narrative. One of the longer, and more gripping, chapters is a long description of D. W. Griffin's movie "Intolerance."
Back to the main plot. While Mendoza is in Hollywood and has seen thousands of films, the year is 1863, so she is living in a desolate canyon. She gets tours of future studio lots from Einar, a film-buff Viking. A botanist living in a drought and suffering from a broken heart, she connects with her fellow immortals living in a More...
Back to the main plot. While Mendoza is in Hollywood and has seen thousands of films, the year is 1863, so she is living in a desolate canyon. She gets tours of future studio lots from Einar, a film-buff Viking. A botanist living in a drought and suffering from a broken heart, she connects with her fellow immortals living in a More...
Jun 19, 2011
Tressa
rated it:
This is the third installment of the Company series. Mendoza is the primary character, but several new operatives are introduced. Also, Imarte, an operative that was first introduced in Sky Coyote is a secondary character.
Mendoza is stationed in California during the 1860s. Actually, she’s stationed where Hollywood will be in the future. She’s there, of course, to collect samples from soon-to-be-extinct plants. Mendoza is also still trying to mend her broken heart. Well, I thi More...
Mendoza is stationed in California during the 1860s. Actually, she’s stationed where Hollywood will be in the future. She’s there, of course, to collect samples from soon-to-be-extinct plants. Mendoza is also still trying to mend her broken heart. Well, I thi More...
May 10, 2011
Alex
rated it:
2½ actually. 1 star for the scraps we get about the Company. 1 for the peripherical characters and plots. ½-star for the page-turning factor.
Now, I confess I'm a sucker and will continue with the series. Just for the company plot and hoping that Joseph is half as interesting as it could have been in book 2. That notwithstanding, I hate that Mendoza. Continue reading at your spoilerish risk for some irrational bashing of her.
Firstly, I consider myself to be fairly romantic. On More...
Now, I confess I'm a sucker and will continue with the series. Just for the company plot and hoping that Joseph is half as interesting as it could have been in book 2. That notwithstanding, I hate that Mendoza. Continue reading at your spoilerish risk for some irrational bashing of her.
Firstly, I consider myself to be fairly romantic. On More...
Dec 26, 2010
Lu
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I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, because it concerns major spoilers for book 1, but from the beginning of the novel we know that Mendoza is undergoing investigation for something that happened while she was in the field in Hollywood in the 19th century, long before the movie stars took over. Baker always artfully combines real history with her own creations and it’s seamless. The same is true of Mendoza in Hollywood, Baker uses recorded history but fills in the blank with the ex
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Jul 06, 2011
Karen
rated it:
You know how people say that we repeat the same patterns and relationships with people over and over and over as a way to work out issues or find closure with the next person if the previous one could not provide it? Well, this happens to Mendoza in the third book of the Company series. Literally.
*IF YOU ARE NOT INTO SPOILERS, STOP READING HERE*
Three hundred years after Mendoza watched her mortal lover burn at the stake in 1500s England, she finds herself working in Califor More...
*IF YOU ARE NOT INTO SPOILERS, STOP READING HERE*
Three hundred years after Mendoza watched her mortal lover burn at the stake in 1500s England, she finds herself working in Califor More...
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Jul 02, 2010
Jamie
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This third book in The Company series places our immortal botanist Mendoza in southern California in 1862, where a fellow operative gleefully points out to her the future sites of the Hollywood sign and Harrison Ford's house. Mendoza's narrative is as melancholy as ever, but the book is very funny in places. I find that I don't care much about the plot or the machinations of the mysterious Company, but I like watching the immortal characters find satisfaction in their work, and try to disregard
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Jul 29, 2011
D.L.
rated it: 
I found this third novel in Kage Baker’s Company series less intriguing than the others. There is no real coherent plot or central conflict. Mendoza is just hanging around Los Angeles in the mid nineteenth century. About two thirds into the book, she meets the clone of her lover from the sixteenth century and immediately jumps into bed with him. His new incarnation is as a British spy working to secure California for the empire and Mendoza allows him to manipulate her into helping him - actu
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Jan 01, 2012
Mara
rated it:
One of the weaker Company novels in the series so far. Mendoza, who makes a return as the narrator of this installment, is not terribly likable as a character. Her thoughts seem limited to one of three things: plants, hatred of mortals, or her lost English lover from centuries past. Yawn.
Baker is obviously infatuated with the pre-glamour version of Hollywood in which she's set the book, but she failed to draw me into the setting. Much like the Civil War raging to the east, the bo More...
Baker is obviously infatuated with the pre-glamour version of Hollywood in which she's set the book, but she failed to draw me into the setting. Much like the Civil War raging to the east, the bo More...
Jul 22, 2009
Isis
rated it:
Good, but not as good as the previous two. The conflict between wise-cracking immortals with a knowledge of both past and future, and the Old California setting, was a lot of fun, but man, I could so have done without the entire boooooring chapter on Griffith's Intolerance.
I am very glad I did not read the Goodreads blurb about this book (or, come to think about it - I just checked - the jacket blurb) because it spoils an event that comes quite late in the book and which, although it More...
I am very glad I did not read the Goodreads blurb about this book (or, come to think about it - I just checked - the jacket blurb) because it spoils an event that comes quite late in the book and which, although it More...
Oct 30, 2007
Keri
rated it:
She thinks: Interesting Old West setting. The book drags a bit in the middle, and I could have done without the 20-page film-critic dissertation on "Intolerance" (come on, Ms. Baker, now you're just showing off), but several intriguing elements are introduced and the climax really kicks the series into high gear.
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Mar 25, 2010
Julie
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This is book 3 of The Company novels. It's not bad. Mendoza is in Los Angeles during the Civil War. It's rather amusing to see all the parallels between it and the modern Los Angeles. The mix of people, the bad weather/climate, the eccentrics, etc.
The Immortals even have their own film festival, watching old movies (well, future movies!) that were filmed near where they're stationed. And that's a particular point where the book drags. We get a play-by-play of a 9 hour movie. And I ca More...
The Immortals even have their own film festival, watching old movies (well, future movies!) that were filmed near where they're stationed. And that's a particular point where the book drags. We get a play-by-play of a 9 hour movie. And I ca More...
Jan 02, 2010
Jonathan
rated it:
Time-traveling cyborgs in the Wild West. That’s right. Time-traveling cyborgs in 1860’s Hollywood, one of which is a movie buff who can’t stop pointing out the (future site of the) Hollywood Bowl, Avenue of th Stars, and celebrity residences. This novel is also great historical fiction for what you learn about 19th-Century L.A. and environs, although it can sometimes be difficult to separate Baker’s feelings about what L.A. has become from what it was then. When I first started reading the Novel
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May 07, 2009
Dan
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Mar 09, 2009
Alex
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I have no idea why Kage Baker isn't a million times more famous and popular, simply because she's the only author who has written a book that involves time travel that I've been able to stand (I hate time travel because it's one of those things that if you start thinking about it always rapidly begins to NOT MAKE SENSE). I think she gets away with it because, at least for the first few books of The Company series, she's really writing really good historical fiction that happens to have time tra
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Jul 11, 2011
Sarah Pi
rated it:
OK, I loved The Garden of Iden, didn't think much of the sequel, and found this entertaining but weird. The plot is meandering til the last section, when it takes off in an unexpected direction. I liked Juan Batista and his birds, but that plot was tied up early. Porforio's dilemma was interesting and also done away with. Other threads introduced in this book were also shunted to the side as if they never mattered: Mendoza's dreams and their byproduct, a brief trip to the future. I have no idea
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Jul 25, 2010
Audra (Unabridged Chick)
rated it:
The third and fourth books in Baker's light and entertaining Company series follow the further adventures of immortal botanist Mendoza. Located in the Los Angeles/Hollywood area, Baker lovingly recreates Civil War era California in Mendoza in Hollywood, where Joseph and his protege are reunited at a dusty, out-of-the-way stagecoach stop. While her fellow company agents keep busy, Mendoza is left own her own, still festering with hurt; it is unsurprising when the double of her long dead lover sho
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Mar 10, 2010
Brooke
rated it:
The front-flap summary of Mendoza in Hollywood promises that Mendoza runs into a man who seems to be identical to Nicholas, her doomed lover from In the Garden of Iden. However, this doesn't really happen until the last quarter of the book, at which point the action really takes off and almost seems like a different book. I feel like it suffers the same flaws that Sky Coyote did: there are tantalizing hints about The Company's secret truths, but they're not given much attention amid all of the s
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Sep 09, 2010
Spuddie
rated it:
#3 in the "Company" series, which is a time-traveling sci-fi fantasy series set pretty much everywhere in history. Mendoza, a botanist, travels through time collecting plant specimens that are going to become extinct to save them in a repository for Dr. Zeus, Inc., aka The Company, an all-powerful entity from some time in the future. Human children, usually orphaned, are chosen and made into immortal cyborg-types and perform these various feats for the Company all over the world in var
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Nov 15, 2010
SA
rated it:
The more I read in this universe the more intrigued I become. This second Mendoza-focused story starts interesting, and I was mostly interested in the level of detail Baker describes; and then at the end you nosedive into this choice Mendoza isn't capable of not making, and her ownership of that and resolution to walk a particular path. Real emotional whiplash, it was great. Can't wait to dive into the next one, though I kind of want to stretch them out because I know the series is finite!
Jul 02, 2009
Keith
rated it:
Another good read from Kage Baker's Novels of the Company series. I'm still not sure what to make of them. They're imaginative with some excellent background information -- this one is set in California during the Civil War -- but the sometimes proceed a rather languid pace, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I wish Good Reads had 1/2 star increments. This book, like the other two I've read, is more than "OK" but I not yet sure that I "Really Liked It." Baker can write the
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Nov 11, 2011
Jeremy
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I enjoyed this for a couple of reasons, but it's wildly uneven. The predecessor, Sky Coyote, was totally tongue-in-cheek and lighthearted, and Mendoza... starts that way but ends up in a totally different place. The central conceit, of immortal cyborgs who know the future (at least the cultural and historical aspects) living through the past, never gets old for me, but this volume doesn't really rise to the top.
Dec 12, 2009
Frances
rated it:
The Botanist Mendoza, immortal cyborg created to do the bidding of the mysterious Company, arrives at a stagecoach inn in the dusty hills of Hollywood, Calfornia, circa 1860. Sent to collect plant specimens before they become extinct in the coming drought, she chronicles the adventures of her fellow immortals and the arrival of a mortal lover she saw burned at the stake 300 years ago.
May 16, 2010
John
rated it:
While this was a well written book with crisp characterization, to me the plot was not dynamic enough. The author does have a nice way of keeping the narrative fresh and adding the kinds of feel-good scenes that stick in your mind -- like the characters assembling for mini-movie festivals in an area that won't become Hollywood for several decades.
Jan 07, 2011
Caren
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I LOVE this series. As I've said before, it's sci-fi and a period novel all wrapped up into one. Particularly interesting to me is the concept that if one knows how history is going to play out, would one feel compelled to change it? Even if you think it can't be changed?
Plus, how does one punish an immortal?
The only thing that saddens me about this series is that I found out the author passed away early in 2010. I would have liked to have had the opportunity to tell her how More...
Plus, how does one punish an immortal?
The only thing that saddens me about this series is that I found out the author passed away early in 2010. I would have liked to have had the opportunity to tell her how More...
Jul 07, 2009
Emily
rated it:
Sigh. This book took forever to get going, and wrapped up the entire plot in about 80 pages. Dear Harcourt: Do not promise me a reunion if it will not happen until well into the last quarter of the book. 230 pages of the mundane lives of not so mundane operatives might have been more interesting if I hadn't been waiting impatiently for Mendoza to "meet" Nicholas again.
Nov 22, 2008
Rocio
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I love every story about Mendoza... she is the character that keeps me coming back. Your saddness at the savagery of human nature. Her in ability to give up hope on love that dooms her to isolation and perhaps even hate. Mendoza.... child.... woman.... warrior....
