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Jun 21, 2011

mark rated it:

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 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 ar More...

13 comments like (19 people liked it)

Sep 28, 2011

faeriemyst rated it:

I cry mercy. Love the concept, and the first third or thereabouts was good, but everything after: the barely there plot, the romance, manor life in the English country, pretty much everything, was all dull, dull, dull. I was disappointed in the lack of sci-fi and the history that was only spoken about and never lived through, so it didn't deliver on either account. Sure, the author can string a sentence together, there were a couple of amusing lines, and the Elizabethan English seemed well-done More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 25, 2009

Lisa rated it:

This is the first book in "The Company” series and it has a wonderful premise. I love the ingenious use of time travel in the plot. The writer is an engaging storyteller and there are so many funny parts. The characters are very interesting. I love the way some real history is made part of what is largely a speculative fiction book. I appreciated the originality of Mendoza’s voice. I felt extremely fond of the goat, a very minor character; there was a lot of humor and pathos around the goat More...

9 comments like (7 people liked it)

Nov 19, 2010

Margaret rated it:

I'm of two minds about this book. On one hand, the premise is interesting: physically enhanced, immortal operatives travelling through time in order to collect animals and plants otherwise bound for extinction, employed by the Company which has used time travel to take control of everything. I'm not tremendously convinced by the book's time travel theory, which is that history cannot be changed, but that that rule only applies to recorded history; that doesn't make a lot of sense to me (what's s More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Apr 04, 2009

Sarah Pi rated it:

My mother has been telling me to read this book for years, and of course she was right. It's a good concept, made better by the character the author chose to tell the story. A nice balance of time-travel SF and historical fiction, vividly described.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 19, 2010

Phoenixfalls rated it:

My first encounter with Kage Baker was a short story in the anthology Wizards: Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy. Her contribution was the highlight of that collection for me, a brightly polished gem of a story small in scope and warmly, wonderfully knowing. On the strength of that story alone I decided I would love the author.

This was my first novel by Baker and her first novel as well, and if it was not quite as brightly polished as the short story (which was, after all, wri More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 08, 2008

Hammerwing rated it:

I really enjoyed this book a lot. It breaks genre boundaries as a sci-fi historical-fiction romance. 'The Company' series of books is about a number of immortal operatives recruited in the past to save historical treasures from being lost to time. This is the first book in the series, and sets the stage for the rest of the books. Kage Baker is a wonderful storyteller, and there were several times throughout the course of the book where I found myself stopping to re-read paragraphs, because t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 30, 2007

Jaye rated it:

Kage Baker has such a knack for writing attractive, interesting prose that I don't think the subject matters very much. In this case, she has started a series of novels that are generally science fictional, but concentrate heavily on the social impact of her proposed technologies.

What if people could be made immortal? What if time travel (backwards only) was possible? What if a profit hungry corporation used these two technologies to make itself into the East India Company of the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 24, 2010

Jamie rated it:

I very much enjoyed this little time travel story, which is set mostly in England during the bloody reign of Mary Tudor. It's quite funny in places, but it's narrated as a melancholy flashback and never disguises the fact that it's heading towards an inevitably sad ending.

This is a neat twist on the usual time travel story: our protagonists aren't exactly time travelers themselves. Rather, they were rescued from certain death as children and given enhanced, immortal bodies. They spen More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2010

Acacia rated it:

another EDIT: Re-reading this again. Great authors never truly die but it is still pretty shitty when they leave their earthly bodies.
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EDIT: Adding a star. Re-reading this, and discussing it with my sister, I realize that it is truly one of my favorite books. Especially for the opening chapters, when Mendoza narrates her introduction to The Company; they are like the written equivalent of a one-hour rally in volleyball. Just tight, whip-smart prose, and a delightfully precocious, More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 19, 2009

rivka rated it:

3.5 stars

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, narrator/protagonist has a clear and consistent voice, good plot pacing. But I didn't much care for the resolution, and I particularly disliked how obviously a setup for the rest of the series the last few More...

8 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 19, 2010

Amy rated it:

This is the most fabulous series in the entire world. I *adore* Mendoza. This book beautifully sets up the premise for all the Company books that follow.

That said, there's a lot of melodrama in this first book. If folks don't like this one, I usually urge them to try the second one, "Sky Coyote" anyways because each book has it's own tone. I'd hate for folks to be turned off from the entire series just because they didn't like the tone of the first book.

*** More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 16, 2011

D.L. rated it:

The first of Kage Baker’s Company novels is part science fiction, part romance, part historical fiction, and part YA coming of age story. It follows the rescue of Mendoza, a young Spanish peasant girl, from the Inquisition through the completion of her first assignment as an immortal cyborg for the Company at the age of nineteen in Bloody Queen Mary’s England in the mid sixteenth century. Summarizing the plot would be a spoiler, but suffice it to say that Mendoza’s attitude about humanity is a More...

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Jul 05, 2011

Bryan J rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jun 19, 2011

Tressa rated it:

This is the first book in the Company series. The Company, a.k.a. Dr. Zeus, is from the future and can only travel into the past. Unfortunately, that is a very expensive trip. The Company also developed an immortality treatment, which is also expensive and can only be performed on children with certain characteristics. To make both of these inventions profitable, the Company “recruited” children from disparate backgrounds and time periods. Mendoza, the primary character, is such a recruit. More...

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Jun 16, 2011

Lightreads rated it:

There’s a lot of stuff going on here I won’t summarize since the book infodumps it way better than I can. Let’s shorthand to girl rescued from dungeons of Inquisition and made immortal time agent of twenty-fourth century corporation, except all the action occurs on an isolated British country estate in 1557.

Lots of little things I like – historical scifi, a dryly hilarious narration, a goat – that somehow didn’t add up into one big thing I like. Dunno. There’s a lot of stuff going on More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 20, 2011

MB rated it:

Finished reading In the Garden of Iden (1997) by the late Kage Baker the other night. I’d been ignoring her work for years as I’m not as into series as I once was. But over the last couple of years I’d picked up a couple of her books so I could see what the fuss was about, but still hadn’t gotten around to reading any. Then, not too long ago, Tor reissued In the Garden of Iden, the first book in her popular “The Company” series. Since I always like to start reading a series at the beginning I pi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 27, 2010

Ryan rated it:

It's about time I read this one - I started Baker's Company series with the third book, for some reason, and have loved making my way slowly through it, but missed out on some defining character moments at the start.

So, Iden is not a misspelling of the garden of Eden, but rather a reference to Sir Walter Iden, a character in the novel who has a stately estate garden full of botanical curiosities. During the time of the novel, the counter-reformation will occur in England, and Sir Wa More...

3 comments like

Jul 16, 2010

Jacqie rated it:

I just re-read this one after a looong time. This is Kage Baker's first book, so she hasn't quite hit her stride with the dry humor, although you can see it here. You can also clearly see her love for all things Elizabethan. I wonder if she already had her Company arc already all planned in this book, although I feel it stands on its own just fine. There are a few things that could have been fleshed out more, like the Crome radiation which is introduced and never explained. And just don't th More...

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Jun 25, 2010

Lady rated it:

Kage Baker is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. It's not often that a woman Science Fiction writer captures my attention, but she's got me absolutely captivated! She combines alot of great elements to create a new world view and paints the past and the future with more than just a "technicolour" brush. LOVE it!

In the future a company will discover the secrets of both time travel and immortality. Unfortunately both have drawbacks. The past can't be changed and only c More...

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Jan 25, 2010

Grace rated it:

At the heart of this book is a truly nifty time-travel conceit. And wrapped around that time-travel conceit is a very, very vivid historical setting. The main character is interesting, her work and world are fascinating, and there's enough humour throughout the book to make it an enjoyable read.

That said, I'm not sure there's a heart ticking away amongst the scifi and history. I really felt no urgency of plot, no buildup to an overarching theme. I read the next book in the series More...

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May 19, 2011

Pikachu rated it:

Mendoza was a child during the Spanish Inquisition, rescued before she could be executed by a mysterious organization called The Company (aka Dr. Zeus Inc). They "adopt" orphans throughout history and genetically engineer them to be immortal cyborgs, which they send on business trips through time to collect extinct/endangered specimens of plants and animals to be used in the future (their present).

This particular book in the series takes place in Tudor England. Mendoza and More...

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Jan 26, 2010

Julie rated it:

I think the idea of The Company is really cool. Time travel! Immortals! Though I do have a question about time paradoxes. If you can't change recorded history, no matter how hard you try, fine. But now it's set up so a lot more of history is being recorded than ever before, right? Isn't that causing problems?

I liked it and I'll definitely read more of the series. Though I do hope it has a conclusion of some sort since the author's in ill health.

My one problem with it is t More...

0 comments like

Oct 07, 2009

Hayden rated it:

I ended up liking this a lot--enough that I think I'll read the next one in the series, which is unprecedented for me with adult sci fi.

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 suspected of sharing Henry VIII's Protestant beliefs was being burned at the stake.

The narrator was a child during the Inquisition in Spain, and finds herself in the dungeons, about to go More...

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Oct 28, 2010

Joy rated it:

The first of a series about time travelers who go back in time and make selected children immortal (the process only works on children). These people are then tasked with preserving and caching fortunes, great works of art, extinct animals and plants, that sort of thing, for the future. The story is about a Spanish child (Mendoza) who is immortalized, trained as a botanist, and at the ripe old age of about-19 inserted into Tudor England to preserve extinct plants. The religious upheavals of the More...

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May 03, 2011

Jenny rated it:

Quick read, entertaining, I'd consider reading #2. As far as time travel goes though, I enjoyed Connie Willis more. This is the first in a series so it might delve more deeply into the ramifications of time travel, but I found it a little unbelievable that this company could go back in time just to make a profit out of collecting endangered species.

And, yeah. Friar John.

"For God's sake, it's crazy! These people are giving up their civil rights! It's a step back More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 20, 2011

Kat rated it:

Rescued from the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition, feisty little Mendoza is enrolled in a special school and becomes a cyborg agent of The Company, a group of immortal merchants and scientists who travel backwards in time in order to make money for The Company and to benefit mankind in various ways.

Mendoza is educated and trained as a botanist and, for her first mission, she’s sent back to 16th century Europe to document and study samples from the famous Garden of Iden in England. S More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 21, 2011

Kam rated it:

As I write this review I get the sense of having hit some kind of record. It has been a long time, a very long time, since I managed to finish a book within a day. It was easy to do so when I was younger, when I had more time to do focus almost exclusively on reading for pleasure and schoolwork wasn't much of a chore, but recent years (and, perhaps, training) have slowed my pace down considerably. An enjoyable novel takes perhaps two to four days of reading between work and other things that nee More...

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Nov 19, 2010

Ubik rated it:

Started out great, but fell flat in the middle. I was really hoping for more exploration into the time travel element and the "scavenger-hunting" that I was originally interested in reading for in the first place. It just turns into a doomed love story from about a third of the way through and never does anything else. Every other aspect takes a back seat to the romance.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2012

Kiri rated it:

Interesting debut book about The Company, an organization dedicated to retrieving lost elements from the past (plants, animals, books, relics). They accomplish this through 1) making people immortal at various stages in history and 2) using time travel to send instructions back to those immortals about what they are to collect and preserver. Intriguing thesis, but then this story takes a somewhat odd turn and blossoms into a tragic love tale. After a series of heavy-handed foreshadowing, in t More...

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