Customer Reviews

Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy

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I was so sorry to learn of Kage Baker's passing. Her work has always been a favorite of mine (as with all authors, some works are better than others) and this little bit of fluff felt like the whipped cream on top of her oeuvre. While certainly not destined for the ranks of immortal literature, this little book was just plain fun to read. It was also fun to learn something of the precursors to the Company. I gobbled it up in one swallow, laughed, and was greatly saddened to know that this was probably the last new thing from Ms. Baker. [PS - it's just a bit blue, although I think only the most sensitive would find it objectionable. Just fair warning.]

First off Baker fans who already have "The Women of Nell Gwynne's" (Subterranean Press) may be disappointed since the is the exact same tale under a different title. Why this occurred, I do not know, but there is a short story bonus "The Bohemian Astrobleme" included. Other than that it's pure Victorian steampunk vividly realized. Baker touches upon the early Company antics via the Gentleman's Speculative Society using wit, clever characterizations, and a wee bit of ribald behavior! I'd rate the book higher if it were not a rehash.

This novella and short story by the late, lamented Kage Baker is a tiny, detailed pleasure with old-fashioned overtones, like eating a petit four or a sugared violet in a painted tin. Baker created a universe of time-traveling immortal cyborgs, evil corporations and health conscious calvanism in her Company series. In Nell Gwynne, Baker returns to that universe but to the lttle explored Victorian Era. This is also Baker's attempt to explore the popular steampunk genre and she is faithful to both. The cyborgs are in evidence but take a back-seat and the evil corporation is still creating itself in the form of The Gentlemen's Speculative Society and the Ladies of Nell Gwynne's.

Lady Beatrice is an aristocratic young lady who has fallen on hard times. Indeed, she has been forced to take to whoring. Her brains and spirit bring her to the attention of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society and Nell Gwynne where she is employed as a spy in her role as prostitute. The novella and the story contained in this volume detail two of her adventures in this capacity. Baker includes the Victorian machines and automata so beloved by fans of steampunk as well as a Victorian setting that is simultaneously anachronistic and realistic. Readers of the Company novels will get clues regarding the development of the Company but new readers can easily read this as a stand alone steampunk adventure. Wonderful illlustrations round out the enchantment. Recommended to fans of Baker, the company, steampunk and victoriana.

[This is an abridged version of a review that has appeared elsewhere online.]

The late Kage Baker, after completing the main narrative of her Company series (about time-traveling immortals tasked with preserving that which would otherwise be lost to history), continued writing fiction set in that universe, but focused now on various sidelines to the larger story of the Company. The novel-length expansion of her earlier novella The Empress of Mars was one such work, as were several pieces dealing with the Company's Victorian-era counterpart, the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, and its Ladies' Auxiliary. Baker's final Company-universe novel, Not Less Than Gods, chronicled the rise of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, a familiar character from the main series. That novel, while as engaging and dryly humorous as all of Baker's writing, felt rather tentative and episodic, less a fleshed-out story than a series of engaging but distantly-observed sequences. A similar quality is evident in the two shorter works collected in Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy, a trade paperback from Subterranean Press. Not as compellingly structured as her other fiction, these stories are nonetheless briskly humorous and eventful enough to entertain fans of the late, lamented storyteller.

About three-quarters of the volume is taken up by a reprint of The Women of Nell Gwynne's, originally released by the same publisher as a standalone hardcover novella. Winner of the Locus and Nebula Awards and a nominee for the Hugo and the World Fantasy, it comes with an impressive pedigree, and indeed there is much to admire in Baker's evocation of Victorian society. She captures its formal absurdities without the stiff period prose of much historical fiction.

In the aftermath of a family tragedy, a young woman who comes to call herself Lady Beatrice, having no other option, becomes a prostitute. She is, like many of Baker's characters, sufficiently tough-minded that this presents no practical or psychological difficulties, and indeed the difficulties of prostitution, and lower-class British life in general, are but briefly alluded to before Lady Beatrice receives an unexpected offer and finds herself an employee of Nell Gwynne's, a highly respectable house of prostitution whose real business is the secrets that can be coaxed from rich and powerful clients, secrets that are, as far as the women are aware, used for the good of the British Empire.

To help in their tasks, the women of Nell Gwynne's receive various pieces of ingenious technology from their associates at the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, including unexpectedly modern cameras, miniature guns, and other steampunk devices. These inventions prove especially useful when, as is sometimes necessary, the women become involved in activities slightly outside their general line. Just such a situation arises about one-third of the way through the novella, when a reclusive British nobleman who has been spending his fortune on a mysterious endeavor based at his ancestral home invites a group of millionaires there for a demonstration of... something. Naturally, these millionaires require entertainment of the feminine variety, so Lady Beatrice and three of her fellows have been assigned to learn as much as they can about the secrets of Basmond Hall.

The succeeding chapters set up the hall and its inhabitants with the brisk lightness of touch that makes Baker's work so delightful to read. But that lightness can, under certain circumstances, come at a cost to the depth of the narrative. That's especially the case here, in which the conflict is resolved in a quick and straightforward manner that lacks the sheer cleverness of the author's best work. Impersonation, violence, captivity, and international intrigue pass by so quickly that they lack the impact they deserve, and the length of the denouement is seriously out of proportion to the rest of the novella. Still, the quiet resourcefulness and sharp tongues of the ladies balance out the slightness of their adventure.

The same is true of "The Bohemian Astrobleme," a novelette featuring Lady Beatrice that firsts appears in print here, having previously been made available free online by the publisher. In this story, agents of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society discover a new source of a rare mineral that will be invaluable for their work, but the precise location of the mine is held only by a close-mouthed local. So it becomes necessary for a representative of the Ladies' Auxiliary to loosen his tongue...

Even more than the novella, this novelette feels rather like a detailed outline, not a complete story. There's a possibly-supernatural mystery with a very funny solution, an ingenious scheme to obtain the mine, a roguish fellow agent, and a neat new bit of covert technology, but we're told about them more than shown them, and their charm is thus diminished.

At 165 pages of good-sized print, Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy is a slim title, and the abruptness of its content furthers that air of the insubstantial. For those not yet acquainted with the author's work, it probably wouldn't serve as the best introduction, and readers who have already purchased the novella in hardcover form might be better served by reading the new novelette online. But for devotees of the Company's cheerful anachronism and Baker's wry genius who haven't yet met the women of Nell Gwynne's, this volume is an essential supplement.

This is a reprint of the Nebula-winning novella The Women of Nell Gwynne's combined with the short story "The Bohemian Astrobleme." Both stories center on Lady Beatrice, who works at Nell Gwynne's, which is the (fallen) ladies' auxiliary to the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, which is the precursor to the Company of Baker's Company series. Both stories are fun steampunk capers with Baker's trademark humor, so this edition makes for a pleasant afternoon's read. It should work for both Company novices and long-time fans.

I've read many Kage Baker books, and this is one of the best. I liked it well enough that I sent a copy to a former studen who now lives in Montana. She enjoyed it also.