false<![CDATA[In the Garden of Iden (The Company, #1)]]>http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173300942m/270490.jpg2704908In 16th-century Spain, everybody expects the Spanish Inquisition, as they have a well-known tendency to cart people off to their dungeons on trumped-up charges. What 5-year-old Mendoza, on the brink of being tortured as a Jew, is totally unprepared for is to be rescued by the Company--the ultimate bureaucracy of the 24th century--and made immortal. In return, all she has to do is travel through time on a series of assignments for the Company and collect endangered botanical specimens. The wisecracking, mildly misanthropic Mendoza wants nothing to do with historical humans, but her first assignment is to travel to England in 1553--uncomfortably close to those damn Inquisitors--with Joseph and Nefer, two other Company operatives. Their intent is to gather herb samples from the garden of Sir Walter Iden, a foolish though generous country squire. (Kage Baker knows her Shakespeare: Sir Walter is the descendant of Alexander Iden, loyal subject of Henry IV, who slew the hungry rebel Jack Cade in that very garden in Kent.)
The cyborg trio poses as Doctor Ruy Lopez, his daughter Rosa (the irrepressible Mendoza, now grown), and her duenna, Doña Marguerita; Sir Walter's hospitality and discretion are bought for the promise of restored youth. (There are hilarious moments that call to mind the Coneheads, who claimed to be from France when caught doing anything peculiar.) Sir Walter's secretary, Nicholas Harpole, is immediately suspicious of and hostile towards the strange "Spanish" visitors, which prompts Mendoza to fall in love with him. Nicholas has his own badly kept secret: he's proudly Protestant at a time when Queen Mary and Philip of Spain are on a Catholicizing rampage. Mendoza knows Nicholas is probably doomed, and that as a Company operative she cannot meddle with his fate, but love makes people do desperate things. Baker surpasses even Connie Willis in humor and precision of period detail in this fresh, ingenious first novel.<i>--Barrie Trinkle</i>2271341997In the Garden of Iden (The Company, #1)total:549|5:144|4:224|3:126|2:41|1:14|549209080610044falsefalseWed Mar 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009Tue Mar 03 23:00:33 -0800 2009Wed Mar 25 15:01:03 -0700 2009
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42falsefalseSat Apr 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009Wed Apr 01 05:24:25 -0700 2009Sat Apr 04 09:35:06 -0700 200941falsefalseTue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008Tue Jan 08 15:23:03 -0800 2008Tue Jan 08 15:32:20 -0800 2008
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41falsefalseFri Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006Mon Jul 30 19:43:09 -0700 2007Mon Jul 30 20:10:09 -0700 2007 What i...more...]]>
31falsefalseThu Mar 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009Mon Aug 11 13:04:55 -0700 2008Thu Mar 19 10:02:47 -0700 2009 I really enjoyed the first 80% of the book. It's an interesting premise -- what if someone from the future came back and seeded the past with immortal operatives, each one culled from the humans of the past centuries? And the writing is great -- excellent characterization, narra...more...]]>
40falsefalseWed Oct 07 17:57:07 -0700 2009Wed Oct 07 18:08:10 -0700 2009 This is really a sci fi/historical fiction crossover. Most of the action takes place in England during the reign of Bloody Mary, when everyone who was ...more...]]>
30falsefalseMon Jul 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009Sun Jun 28 18:21:36 -0700 2009Tue Jul 21 18:54:38 -0700 2009
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40falsefalseSun Apr 05 22:03:33 -0700 2009Sun Apr 05 22:10:52 -0700 2009 This series doesn't actually do much with the mechanics of time travel, which was a bit of a disappointment (but doubtless made it much easier to understand!). However I enjoyed the culture-shock moments between the immortal, theoretica...more...]]>
41falsefalseThu Apr 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009Sun Feb 08 16:47:08 -0800 2009Thu Apr 09 20:20:41 -0700 200930falsefalseSun Oct 05 00:00:00 -0700 2003Sat Nov 22 13:46:12 -0800 2008Sat Nov 22 13:46:12 -0800 2008
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40falsefalseThu Nov 20 00:00:00 -0800 2008Thu Sep 18 10:53:00 -0700 2008Fri Nov 21 15:44:34 -0800 2008 The thing that disappointed me the most in this novel was the sneering at religion and the religious. There are not any redeeming qu...more...]]>
51falsefalseSun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006Sun Jul 06 11:15:21 -0700 2008Sun Jul 06 19:39:48 -0700 2008 I've said it before, I'll say it again, I am not a gentle reader folks.
Kage Baker is a brilliant novelist. Intrigue, interconnecting threads of story carried through multiple books, danger, romance and above all incredible...more...]]>
10falsefalseThu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008Tue Jun 17 12:09:48 -0700 2008Tue Jun 17 12:28:50 -0700 2008 Nifty premise: sometime in the future, some dude invents a) immortality and b) time travel. So he goes back into the dawn of time and grabs young kids and confers i...more...]]>
20falsefalseSun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008Sat May 24 08:21:36 -0700 2008Fri Jun 06 13:19:11 -0700 2008
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30falsetrueThu Apr 24 16:36:34 -0700 2008Sun Apr 20 17:34:01 -0700 2008Thu Apr 24 16:36:11 -0700 2008
The Company series puts a neat futuristic spin to it. Overall it brought up some great issues, namely what happens when you interfere with...more...]]>
30falsefalseSat Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009Mon Oct 12 17:46:59 -0700 2009Mon Oct 12 17:50:43 -0700 2009
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50falsefalseMon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007Thu Oct 04 08:37:29 -0700 2007Thu Oct 04 08:43:55 -0700 2007 She's rescued from the Spanish Inquisition by members of the Company. A company that offic...more...]]>
31falsefalseWed Sep 23 15:14:11 -0700 2009Fri Oct 02 06:29:31 -0700 2009
Luckily, the cast develops in later books, but this one has to coast on the fact that it is the introduction to such a fascinating world and Baker takes all these typical sci...more...]]>
50falsefalseThu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004Mon Aug 24 09:59:32 -0700 2009Mon Aug 24 10:01:13 -0700 20093
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10falsefalseTue Oct 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009Mon Oct 12 17:04:33 -0700 2009Tue Oct 20 10:53:07 -0700 2009 however, this was a romance...more...]]>
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