Recently returned from war, young Edward Anton Bell-Fairfax is grateful to be taken under the wing of the Gentleman’s Speculative Society. At the Society, Edward soon learns that a secret world flourishes beneath the surface of London’s society, a world of wondrous and terrible inventions and devices used to tip the balance of power in a long-running game of high-stakes intrigue. Through his intensive training Edward Anton Bell-Fairfax, unwanted and lonely boy, becomes Edward Anton Bell-Fairfax, Victorian super-assassin, fleeing across the Turkish countryside in steam-powered coaches and honing his fighting skills against clockwork opponents.
As Edward travels across Europe with a team of companions, all disguised as gentleman dandies on tour, he learns more about himself and the curious abilities he is gradually developing. He begins to wonder if there isn’t more going on than simple international intrigue, and if he and his companions are maybe part of a political and economic game stretching through the centuries. But, in the end, is it a game he can bring himself to play?
Edward Anton Bell-Fairfax, the idealistic assassin. Perhaps the most dangerous man alive.
Not Less Than Gods (Company)
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle.
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The ninth Company novel (after 2007's The Sons of Heaven) introduces Edward Bell-Fairfax, a child of mysterious origins who gradually discovers that he's not quite like ordinary people. Born to an unmarried aristocratic mother, raised by distant foster parents, and spirited away to boarding school by the sinister Dr. Nennys, Bell-Fairfax serves an unhappy stint in the military and afterward is inducted into the Company of scientists and spies. Using messages from the future and Charles-Babbage-meets-Maxwell-Smart technologia, Bell-Fairfax travels Europe with his mentor, Ludbridge, attempting to swing the Crimean War in England's favor and learning in the process that achieving utopian goals requires a great deal of dirty work. Plenty of cloak-and-poison-dart action gets the reader through the exhausting Victorian nomenclature (the Aetheric Transmitter, the Ascending Chamber) and discourses on the evils of misused technology. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Returning to the worlds of the Company novels, Baker delves into the history of a young man whose name has come up before. Edward Bell-Fairfax is an idealist ideally suited to the life of intrigue and derring-do that Redking’s Club provides. One Dr. Nennys grooms him, then delivers him to a residential place at Redking’s. In a Europe layered with secret societies and intrigue, riddled with astonishingly advanced technology, where the great powers are trembling at the brink of war, Bell-Fairfax and three other young men are trained to work as a team of spies and assassins. Then they are sent on a grand tour across Europe, where they experience marvels, and Bell-Fairfax proves that he was born for the work. Baker builds a fantastic alternate Europe with a deft historical touch and spins an excellent spy story around it. Not Less Than Gods is a satisfying addition to the annals of the Company that is also an engaging stand-alone novel. --Regina Schroeder
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Better for Baker newbies than long-time fans.,
By
This review is from: Not Less Than Gods (Company) (Hardcover)
This is an odd book, a standalone Company novel that I think would actually work better for someone who does not know the series than for those of us who know and love it (which might explain the very lackluster reviews I've seen of it online).
Not Less Than Gods is written in a third-person omniscient near-objective mode, meaning the narrator knows everything about everyone in the story but rarely delves into their thoughts and feelings, staying detached. Despite what the jacket would lead you to believe, it never enters Edward's head -- he is a cipher to those around him and to the reader. I resented this mode at first -- it seemed to leave a great gaping hole in every scene -- but the introduction of Rabbi Canetti reveals that this was a very deliberate choice on Baker's part and one, in fact, that I believe would make the book for those who have not read the Company novels (and have the eyes to see it). To one who has not encountered the Company before, this novel has a central theme -- the danger of creating a monster and then giving it a soul. It is a Frankenstein tale, plain and simple, with Dr. Nennys as Dr. Frankenstein and Edward as his monster -- a subtler monster than Shelley's, but just as horrifying to the average bystander and just as innocent. We the reader cannot see Edward's perspective for this to work, however, because he does not know that he is a golem; the objective tone Baker uses reinforces her message. The novel still is not entirely effective; I think it would have been stronger had Baker dipped more into the ancillary characters' heads, and it is rather slow starting and episodic throughout. It is also more steampunk than I expected, paying far more attention to the workings of all the wondrous machines than were really warranted by the story. But I think that if I did not know the Company novels already, I would have been quite moved by the climax as Ludbridge watches Edward realize what exactly he is. However, I do know the Company novels, and I have met Edward before. I know his history already. Most importantly, I know how much more of a complete person (as opposed to a golem with a soul) he is than this book gives him credit for, so I am resistent to giving him the pass that this book provides him on all those shady ethical issues. With all that extra knowledge, I was left almost entirely cold by the novel. I wanted, instead, the novel that the book jacket led me to believe this was -- a real dip into Edward's psyche before Mendoza ran into him in California, something more realistic psychoanalysis than allegory. Or, at least, something with a bit more humor and action, some of the dashing zest for life it seemed Edward had (in amongst his raging egomania). So all in all I'm frustrated by this novel, but I nonetheless hope it does well, and it would be very nice if it finds an audience outside of Baker's core Company fans.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not fascinating, not up to Kage Baker par (which is high).,
By Richard Gilbar "ex-librarian, ex-optometrist,... (WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Not Less Than Gods (Company) (Hardcover)
I have read all of Kage Baker's books and most of her short stories. I think she is a fantastic writer. "Not Less than Gods" is just not up to her standard. The characters are caricatures and I don't feel like I know any of the characters any better than when they were introduced in this book. The story is cookie-cutter: one adventure after another where they mysteriously have an anachronistic device that will just happen to save the day. Now, I'll have to go write a glowing review for one of her other books to maintain my equilibrium, but this book is a clunker. I made myself finish so that I could write an honest review and it was exasperating.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rollicking, adventurous steampunk,
By
This review is from: Not Less Than Gods (Company) (Hardcover)
Your reaction to the announcement of Not Less Than Gods by consistently excellent SF and fantasy author Kage Baker will probably depend to a large extent on how familiar you are with her The Company series. If you haven't read any of the Company novels or collections, the story of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society (GSS) and one of its operatives, Edward Alton Fairfax-Bell, sounds like an interesting and entertaining steampunk novel. However, if you're familiar with the Company series, your reaction to a novel about "Edward's creation and recruitment by the GSS, his training, and his first mission" will probably be more of the "I want it and I want it NOW!" variety, with the number of exclamation points determined by how enthusiastic you are about the main series. (I limited myself to one, to avoid the impression that this review was written by a teenage girl. Mentally, please feel free to add a few more.)
In a nutshell, the Company series deals with the operatives of Dr. Zeus Inc., a 24th century company that has discovered the secret of time travel and naturally decides to use it for corporate profit, sending quasi-immortal cyborgs back in time to collect lost art, extinct plants and so on. One of the things I like best about the Company series is the way the information is slowly revealed throughout the series. For example, the excellent first novel in the series, In the Garden of Iden, at first reads like a more or less self-contained story about Company botanist Mendoza, but it takes on a completely different meaning when you read the later books in the series, because there's a huge story arc building up throughout the series, with layers upon layers added to the plot and the characters as the revelations build up. The two stand-alone Company novels Kage Baker released after the completion of the main series, The Empress of Mars and Not Less than Gods, have a completely different impact depending on how familiar you are with the series, because fans already know the entire story and are now being filled in on specific aspects of it -- in the case of Not Less Than Gods, the early life of Edward Alton Fairfax-Bell, who makes his first Company series appearance in Mendoza in Hollywood. In that sense, it's a bit similar to The Life of the World to Come, but about Edward rather than Alex Checkerfield. Even though it feels like a prequel, using that term doesn't make much sense in a series that deals with the nature of time travel. Even if you haven't read any of the Company novels, Not Less Than Gods is still a very entertaining read. Kage Baker includes enough hints about the nature of the Company to make sure that new readers will have a broad idea of what's going on -- or at least as much as the main characters do. Even without this, the novel is a rollicking adventure story set in the Victorian era, about a small group of GSS agents traveling across Europe and the Middle East, causing havoc and (in the process) affecting history in several ways. They're armed with an array of -- for that period -- advanced gadgets and weaponry, a distinct appreciation for alcoholic beverages, and a good dose of jolly-old-boy British witticisms. Young Edward is a fascinating character, different from his peers in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, idealistic, tortured, and brave. As always, Kage Baker's prose is delightfully sly, always sounding as if she is sharing a subtle joke with her readers, gradually drawing you in as she unfolds the plot. As a long-time fan of Kage Baker, I was extremely pleased with Not Less Than Gods. If you're in the market for an excellent SF series, I'd probably still recommend starting with In the Garden of Iden first, but Not Less Than Gods is a solid addition to the Company series and works surprisingly well as a standalone novel.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
