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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Solid but not Baker's best, December 22, 2000
Kage Baker has suddenly arrived on the SF scene with several novels and a number of fine short stories. Most of her work so far, including Sky Coyote, is part of a series about the "Company", Dr. Zeus, Incorporated, and its time-travelling immortal servants. This is a pretty good setup for stories. Certainly, as with most time travel books, it doesn't do to look too closely at the paradoxes implied. In addition, the restrictions placed on the Company's technology have a sense of adhocery to them. But I quibble: suspension of disbelief is not too hard, and Baker's work has been interesting and involving. She is one of the most promising new SF writers. Sky Coyote is told by the Immortal Joseph, a Facilitator for the Company who has been working for them for thousands of years. His new assignment, in 1700 A.D., is to appear to a town full of Chumash Indians in (what will become) California, as a figure from their legends: Sky Coyote. He is to persuade them to pack up their town, lock, stock and canoe, and be transported to the future. You see, their culture is about to be destroyed by the white men -- first Spanish missionaries; eventually the Americans -- and the Company wishes to preserve as much of this culture as possible for restoration or at least study in the 24th century. (Why and how they make a profit doing so is not ever convincingly explained, but let that pass.) This makes for an enjoyable story. There is a lot of interesting detail about the impressively advanced Chumash culture, including their commercial nature, and their stories and legends. Joseph as Sky Coyote gets to make a lot of jokes, and have a lot of fun. There isn't quite enough conflict, and the plot isn't twisty enough, but the basic story is still worth reading. However, Baker intersperses this with some other details. Events in Joseph's past life, some of which raise doubts in him about the Company. A lot of focus on an otherwise thoroughly minor character named Mendoza (who is the protagonist of some other books in the series). A few strange intimations of something portentous occurring in 2355 A.D. All this is really quite interesting. The problem is, it's really not got much of anything to do with the rest of the novel, and it serves mainly as a distraction. The main story is a bit thin anyway, and the hints of some really interesting stuff that we'll get to eventually (but not in this book!) don't help. Make no mistake about it: Baker has the chops of a fine writer. Her characters are well drawn, her prose is sound, her stories hold the reader's interest. And whatever misgivings I have, I still enjoyed Sky Coyote. But I think it's somewhat flawed structurally by the intrusion of an external story arc that is presented only by hints. In the final analysis, this novel will mainly be of interest to readers committed to the entire series, and even those readers will probably find themselves chomping at the bit for the main event to come along.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Better than Garden, May 27, 2004
See, I don't get it. Everyone says that Sky Coyote is their least favourite of Baker's books. Why? Is it because Joseph is the narrator? Is it because it doesn't deal with European-based history? Is it because somehow Baker wrote less beautifully than she usually does? I don't know. I thought it much better than Garden of Iden. In Sky Coyote, Joseph and Mendoza are sent to California to retrieve an entire tribe of people before white men can get at them with land grabs and smallpox. Baker knows California well: she lives there, so everything in the book has that touch of authenticity. Although she can't give the Chumash language that same kind of twist she gave Elizabethan English, she doesn't fall into the trap that most authors do with American Indians: namely, overly-simplify the language they speak. Of the three factions in the book (future mortals, immortals, and the Chumash), the Chumash come out most human, and that is a feat in itself when the book is narrated by an immortal. And speaking of immortals, I like Joseph so much better than Mendoza! She's stubborn, straightforward, and believes in one thing and one thing only. Fairly one-dimensional, even after having read Garden. Joseph ponders things, has faults and fears, and is much older and remembers far back to the Stone Age of Europe, whence he came. Yet he's able to work despite his fears. Admittedly, he largely ignores them. But isn't that what we do most of the time? I suppose what I liked best about the book, though, is the fact that it deals with the fallibility of Dr. Zeus and pokes fun at modern society in a way Garden did not. Introduced is the fact that Dr. Zeus has only provided the immortals with historical information up until a certain year in the future, where supposedly paradise on earth will have been achieved and the immortals can rest from their labours. Also added are the concept of the Enforcers, immortals who were recruited to kill raging hoardes during the Stone Age, but then lost their necessity and slowly vanished somehow. The idea is that Dr. Zeus can make mistakes. I loved it. Here is a company that saves you from certain death in the past and makes you immortal. You're trained to believe it's a wise and benevolent power. What happens when you begin to doubt? It's great stuff. Better than that are the future mortals who come to the past to oversee the Chumash tribe's excavation. They are like stretched-thin overly-exaggerated people of today. They play video games all of the time. Their vocabulary is extremely limited. They frown on controlled substances, are afraid of the Chumash "savages", and don't want to harm anything, even grass. They are each super-specialists, a genius in his own field but a doddering idiot about anything else. They have no sense of the history they are trying to preserve. It's just vindicating for a historian to see, as it feels that way today. Few now care about what happened before-- they are willfully ignorant, perpetuating the same mistakes and thinking they are original. Oh, I liked that. There is, of course, Baker's perpetual theme of single crazy zealots perpetuating murders for a jealous God. She has the Chumash encounter a new monotheistic cult which is, of course, villainous, persuasive, and stops at nothing to gain converts. Much like in Garden's Spain. Or in any of her books. No redeeming qualities, oh no. To be honest, the only way I can get through these parts is that she isn't altogether blatant about them. The story still functions in the characters' minds, and they are believable. So I can still think that God is trying to say something to Joseph, that there is more than the Company. Sometimes I wonder what Kage Baker really thinks.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Fun and Profit in Time Travel, September 6, 1999
I loved In the Garden of Idun and had just as much fun with this one. Joseph as the wiley coyote trickster god is absolutely perfect. Mendoza doesn't get much of a role, but she's there, as the Company operatives try to rescue a whole village of the Chumash Indians before they are nearly wiped out by European invasion and native religious fanaticism. I loved the Rotarian twist she gave to the Chumash which knocks on the head any idea that these people were not socially sophisticated. I can hardly wait for the next novel of The Company.
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