Mendoza in Hollywood (A Novel of the Company, Book 3) [Mass Market Paperback]

Kage Baker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 2001

In the twenty-fourth century, Dr. Zeus Incorporated discovered the secret of time travel, but only how to move backward. Now cyborg operatives are enduring the epochs of Earth's history -- immortals dedicated to the company's great goal: "to make money and improve the lot of humankind."After centuries of disappointments -- including the death of her lover -- the Botanist Mendoza is stranded at a remote stagecoach inn in the unspoised desert destined to be renamed Los Angeles. Back East, a Civil War is raging. But in Cahuenga Pass, there is little for Mendoza and her fellow operatives to do. Until one day the door swings open and in walks the doppelganger of Mendoza's love. And suddenly the Botanist's life is careening toward disaster...again.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ah, pity poor Mendoza. She's a botanist stuck in dusty southern California in 1862, with a broken heart, bizarre companions, lousy food (frijoles and steak again, anyone?), and no plants to study. On top of all that, she's immortal--a cyborg created and maintained by Dr. Zeus, also known as the Company. From its 24th-century headquarters, the Company sends orders back in time to Mendoza and her fellow cyborgs, who collect stuff from the past and send it ahead through time machines for inscrutable uses. But things go from bad to worse for our heroine when drought and smallpox decimate the region, leaving her with nothing to do but pine for her three-centuries-lost mortal love, the martyred Nicholas Harpole. But what's this? Along comes a British agent--the spitting image of Nicholas--hell-bent on upsetting the Union in its hour of need. Mendoza must decide whether to help him in his plot to ensure British rule of the Americas, thereby directly disobeying her Company mandates. She finds herself in a weird race against time itself in this story of science fiction adventure, mystery, and comedy, with not a few reverential in-jokes about SoCal culture thrown in for good measure.

Kage Baker's style and wit make her novels among the best reads in science fiction today. Mendoza in Hollywood, the third book in the Company series (10 are planned) is simply delightful, with the focus back on dear, tragic Mendoza, and tantalizing hints of mysterious conspiracies aplenty. Lots of questions remain unanswered, but Baker weaves such a delicious tale, it's a pleasure to be teased. The series began with In the Garden of Iden and Sky Coyote. --Therese Littleton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The tart-tongued immortal heroine of Sky Coyote returns in Baker's third installment of the Company series. Still reeling from the loss of her lover, the mortal Nicholas Harpole, who burned at the stake in 1555, Mendoza has been reassigned by Dr. Zeus Inc. (a 24th-century corporation) to an outpost disguised as a stagecoach station in Los Angeles's Cahuenga Pass in 1863. Mendoza and her co-workers are a funky bunch of immortals, all specialists in their own fields: finicky Oscar, an anthropologist, poses as a door-to-door salesman; Imarte, an acerbic historian, plays the whore; and Mendoza herself is an expert on extinct plant species. While the narrative unfolds at a languorous pace--the team collects its specimens, the occasional stage rides through--Baker's sinuous prose evokes well California's verdant countryside as it was before being buried under concrete and smog. The dialogue hums with a potent blend of bitchy barbs, humorous asides and pop cultural references. Baker mixes engaging and chilling moments in equal share, but her narrative only shifts into high gear near the end, when Edward Bell-Fairfax, a Victorian-era spy and genetic doppelganger of Mendoza's dead lover, wanders into the station and carries Mendoza off to bed. Although the novel's ending finds her alone again, Mendoza has by then moved from grief to a suitably ironic acceptance of life's troubles. Agent, Virginia Kidd. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper Voyager; Reprint edition (July 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380819007
• ISBN-13: 978-0380819003
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,062,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An intelligent look at immortality, March 22, 2000

By 

Elizabeth (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mendoza in Hollywood: A Novel of the Company (Hardcover)

Oddly enough, I have recently stumbled upon the works of two authors who finally are addressing the immortality theme with intelligence, sensitivity, and subtlety. After the heavy-handed melodrama of popular authors such as Anne Rice, both Kage Baker in her Company Novels and Jane Lindskold in her Athanor novels have shown us, in very different ways, what kind of tragedy (and comedy!) immortality might truly bring.

Reading about Mendoza's latest adventure was heartbreaking -- her gradual descent into madness, juxtaposed with the sublime absurdity of the future-Hollywood setting, was genius.

The only criticism I have of this book is that it does wander a bit in places -- I would have preferred the narrative to be a little tighter. But this is an outstanding effort, definitely the best so far in the series.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of the three(so far)in "The Company" series., January 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Mendoza in Hollywood: A Novel of the Company (Hardcover)

In the third of a projected eight titles in Kage Baker's "The Company" series, the author returns to the cyborg Mendoza, star of the first book "In the Garden of Iden." Fans of early California history and silent film will especially be delighted with the cyborgs' dealings with the humans of the really wild, wild, west of 1860's California, and their take on some of the big classics of silent film. Baker delivers with the mix of humor and seriousness that made the first book of the series so memorable. Baker also reveals just enough more about "The Company" as she did in "Sky Coyote" to whet our appetites for the next books and the fate of Mendoza and her fellow cyborgs in the future, especially in the mysterious year 2355.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Impressive Inconstistency or Slow Plot Exposition?, February 7, 2001

By 

Carl Malmstrom (Monument, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Mendoza in Hollywood: A Novel of the Company (Hardcover)

About two-thirds of the way through "Mendoza in Hollywood", I found myself getting rather disappointed with the book. The sotry was beginning to drag, I was starting to find Baker's inside knowledge of California more a self-serving egotism than a colorful plot setting and the promised reincarnation of the other big protagonist from "In the Garden of Iden" had not yet shown up.

The last hundred pages were a very impressive surprise. Interesting new twists were added, more information - and speculation - about The Company were slowly unpeeled and a few new genuinely fascinating questions popped up. Plot points that seemed overused or pointless even found their way into interesting and inexplicable threads. In retrospect, I find the book even more fascinating than I did immediately after I finished it.

Like its predecessor, "Mendoza in Hollywood" differs very markedly from what came before. The glib parody of Joseph in "Sky Coyote" is replaced by the much more down-to-Earth - and depressed - Mendoza as she once again takes the stage and the plot evens out a lot. Her fligts of fancy in this book avoid parody and instead involve conspiracies, the paranormal and the glory days of Hollywood in the 1920s (even though the book itself primarily takes place in 1862/1863). The realism in the book may not be more pronounced than in "Sky Coyote", but at least Baker is using creative license to advance the plot and not to make social commentary.

Taken in retrospect, I really enjoyed this book. Baker takes a lot longer to work up to the action than she did in "Mendoza"'s predecessors, but the plot entanglements certainly make up for this fact. As with the first two Company books, this one is not without its drawbacks, but the story and mystery that she weaves are such that they are relatively easy to overlook. The first two Company novels were wonderful and this one continues the saga impressively.