Customer Reviews

The Sons of Heaven (The Company)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I highly recommend the Company series, if you enjoy witty, well-written, fun science fiction, ala Connie Willis (though I think Baker is the better writer). This is the eighth and final novel in the series, though there are side-books containing shorter forms.

Unlike most series, however, the publisher does not put numbers on them (e.g., "the first book in the Company series"). And you do really need to read them in order (though there are few you could skip without missing a whole lot, IMHO). Also unlike some series, the books do not recap what has gone before, really. So, beware. For your reference, here they are, with a brief subjective comment:

1 - In the Garden of Iden (The Company). Possibly the best of them all. If you don't like this one, don't waste your time on the others! This one explains the premise for the series. Start here.
2 - Sky Coyote (A Novel of the Company, Book 2). You can skip this one and not miss anything critical. It was just okay, in my opinion. If you like the Joseph character, read this one.
3 - Mendoza in Hollywood: A Company Novel (The Company) A neat book, and quite necessary to the whole.
4 - The Graveyard Game (The Company)Features Joseph and Lewis. Not really necessary, and not one of the better ones.
5 - The Life of the World to Come (The Company)Okay, I lied, the first book isn't the best one. This one is. Some people don't seem to like the Captain, but I thought he was a hoot. Who wouldn't like to have their own personal AI buddy looking out for us? Arrr.
6 - The Children of the Company (The Company)Less like a novel, and more a collection of stories/novellas, all about the bad guys. I wouldn't have minded missing this one.
7 - The Machine's Child (The Company)Though some reviews were negative about this one, I liked it. Necessary plot information here, too.
8 - The Sons of Heaven (the book in question) Finally! The answers to all are revealed, and very satisfyingly, too. Sorry to see the series end, but I'm glad to see I haven't wasted my time tracking all these books down and reading them. Which leads to another complaint about the publishers:

Why aren't these books available? The first one is very hard to find. The Science Fiction Book Club has been issuing the series in pairs, but as of right now the first two "omnibus" editions aren't available used. The last four are in print right now, issued as "Company Men" and "The Company They Keep."

As for the books themselves, I have only a few minor peeves. The author is from California, and has a background in Elizabethan England. Virtually every scene happens in one of these two locales. Gets a bit dull after 8 books. On the other hand, the authenticity of her language is wonderful in Garden of Iden.

The other peeve is that the "little people" are never explained properly. Who are they? Where did they come from? What is "the Memory"?

The bad guys (the evil immortals) are a bit cardboard, I thought. And the humans (non-immortals like you and me) of the 24th century are so pathetic it's a bit overdone. Surely it would be possible to empathize with the immortal good guys without having such simply bad enemies and simply stupid human race in need of saving. So, it could've been a deeper, more sophisticated series. As it is, the Company series is mostly a romp, and a lot of fun. I'm sorry to see it end.

As the conclusion to the Company series, of course everyone who is following the series has to read this book, and it wouldn't matter how many stars I did or didn't give it; you'd be reading it anyway. That said, I feel obliged to warn you that it is NOT a perfect ending to the series. (And, I should point out, it's not necessarily the last book ever to be written within the series - only the last events to be written about.)

A few too many people develop godlike powers here, powers that there really aren't sufficient bases for. Budu and his enforcers flawlessly revived and with all their old skills and nobility, William Randolph Hearst being more all-knowing than ever, Alec, Nicholas, and Edward all turning into omnipotent beings... it's a mess. Oh, and an AI who *is* Dr. Zeus turns up, with a total lack of logic and continuity. And Mendoza remains the simpering moron she turned into, with an overlay of maudlin traditional mother staying at home and minding the kids, which is totally ridiculous. It's not Mendoza anymore; Baker should have just invented a new character for this, two books ago.

There are several new characters, by the way, of whom my favorite is Princess Tiara Parakeet. Don't laugh; she's a true heroine.

But the book does tie up most of the loose ends, and ties up some of them with great style. The dinner party thrown by Victor, to which Labienus and Aegeus are invited, is an absolutely superb section. And it contains one of my favorite little asides in the book - there are many references to bits of culture throughout the ages, especially music. Earlier in the book, there's a point where Edward asks the Captain to play some music, and the Captain selects something from "Edward's two-hundred-and-ten volume set of the best of the Black Dyke Mills Band" which will be unfamiliar to most of you, but to those of us who have been playing band instruments and going to band competitions for years, that's a great line - and my spouse sat up and said, "Hey, I want that set!" Anyway, Victor's dinner party has music on the theme of death, starting with Mozart's "Requiem" and going on to Liszt's "Totentanz," and then,
"With the salad course came the second movement of the 'Discworld Symphony' by Brophy with its outrageous flatting bassoons for Death's recitative..."
That made me laugh out loud.

If you haven't read the previous books in the series, then all the above references to various characters make no sense. And indeed, the whole book will make no sense - you've got to have read the rest of the series first. All of it. If you've skipped anything, you'll miss part of what's going on here, and if you've skipped the previous two books, which had flaws and moments of incoherence, then you'll be even more befuddled, so, flaws and all, go back and read them first.

Okay, so I didn't like how Edward and Mendoza turned out, but I do like how Victor, Lewis, and Joseph turned out. I enjoyed the book more than not, hence 4 stars. I guess what annoyed me most was that the mortals who were smart enough to set up Dr Zeus Inc were stupid in unlikely ways - yes, I know smart people can have their blind spots, but the complete incomprehension of the mentality of the cyborgs, by the people who created them, just isn't likely and nothing Baker says here makes it feel likely. The plot device that's supposed to kill the cyborgs is a really stupid plot device. And I agree with other reviewers that the epilogue is unnecessary and pointless. I did like that the peculiar blind spots of the hill people did make sense and had continuity with what we knew about them before. And if I had to choose the hero I liked best, I'd choose not Alec/Nick/Ed, but good old Preserver Lewis, blind Homer reciting poetry as he awaits his fate.

My recommendation: put on a selection of classical music that features the Dies Irae and pour yourself a glass of Black Elysium, to best enjoy the book.

Let's start with the epilogue, shall we? Look, the last line stinks to high Heaven. It's about as bad as my pun. Worse, really. The whole page is trite, unnecessary, and too predictable to be anything but just plain bad.

God, I hate saying that. I absolutely loved Baker's Company Novels. It's just that--well, I threw the book after reading the final line.

But, hey, you see four stars beside this review, yeah? So it's not all bad, okay? You have to have read the rest of the novels to really appreciate this one-but if you have, you will laugh, cry, and scream about what the cyborgs do and go through. Amazon describes the book as "convoluted," but I really don't think that that is fair. Kage Baker has been developing a short story voice for her series for some time now, and it all works to drive the story quite well.

I thought that a couple of the side-plots (they're not so much side-plots as they are logitudinal plots leading up to a single point) dragged on a little long, and there were a couple of unnecessary author-to-reader quips, but all in all each story line was engaging and--in the end--logically played out.

Back to the ending, but before the epilogue. At first, when I realized the direction it was headed, I rolled my eyes. But it actually plays out quite well. Everything ties together, and the last two chapters were very satisfying.

A couple of notes on another's review:
I disagree that the "bad guys" were two-dimensional. If anything, they were as conflicted and hypocritical as the "good guys." Further, even though they are all ultimately held to the same degree of accountability, there was a tiered approach to their motivations and level of immorality. Plus, given the several story approach of the entire novel, all the characters were a little flat.
As for "the little people," you must be forgetting the previous novels. It's pretty clear how they came about--without spoiling anything, I'll just say that the people in the Hill start out like every other competing "human" at the beginning of time, and that the Company had its hands in their development just as much as anything else.

All in all, Sons of Heaven was a very good book, but with a very bad last page. Save yourself thirty seconds by not reading the Epilogue, and you'll close the series with a very satisfied feeling.

**potential spoiler (not really, but kind of)**

But, hey, anyone else get the feeling that this may be the end of the Company Novels, but that the story could easily go on?

Yes, this is the end, but it was a satisfying conclusion to a "timeless" series. Like any grand finale, all the old favorites are back, good or bad. The book is split between Edward/Mendoza and their family, Lewis who is trapped in a little people's burrow trying to regenerate, Aegeus/Labienus plotting the take over, Suleymann plotting his own revolt, Joseph and the enforcer and the least interesting of the bunch would be the mortals counterplotting against the cyborgs. The plot does get convulted but that keeps the action going. So we get to see the new cyborg family grow and mature, Lewis slowly knits his wounds, Aegeus/Labienus plots and wrecks more havoc on mankind, the more just Suleymann tris to avoid turning the final confrontation into a massive bloodbath, Joseph and Budu enlist new recruits and sharpen their flint axes, and a batch of chocolates becomes the linchpin of the mortal's scheme. These is lot to take in, but at the same time every page brings the end ever closer, it is with regret and a sign of contentment that I closed this book. Ms. Baker, may we have some more, please?

As someone who has loved the "Company" series and much of Kage Baker's other writings, I was disappointed but not surprised by the conclusion to the series.
I loved the idea of the series: time travel and immortality are flawed processes. First, you can't change the past noticeably, and only the newborn can become immortal. To get around these problems and still make money, men of the future make infants of the past immortal, and put them to work preserving various lost items -- medicinal plants, literature, art -- and guarding them until the present, at which time they will be "discovered." But what will happen to the cyborgs when they're no longer needed after centuries of devoted service? And what if the cyborgs decide they can rule the world better than the humans who made them?
The series was initially told through incidents in the lives of the cyborgs, notably Mendoza, a botanist rescued as a child from the Inquisition, and Joseph, the "Facilitator" who rescued her.
However, after four novels and a collection of short stories, the focus was switched to a non-cyborg (though he is a Company project called "Adonai") called Alec. He originally appeared in the "Smart Alec" stories which were seemingly separate from the stories of the Company. In the fifth novel, "The Life of the World to Come,"
it was confirmed that he was part of the Company universe.
Unfortunately, he has taken over the series, and not for the better. For one thing, Baker has violated her own premises. Alec, an adult, becomes immortal, and travels through time with ease and reckless abandon. The result is that the machinations of the cyborgs, who must operate in linear time, becomes pointless. Worse, Mendoza has been reduced to the girlfriend of Alec! She has nothing else to do! And since she suffered severe brain damage in earlier books, her personality is different too.
There was an excitement and drive to the first four novels, the stories in "Black Projects, White Knights," "Gods and Pawns" and "Children of the Company" (not a novel, though tarnished by the attempt to make it seem like one), plus the title story in "Mother Aegypt." I bought and read the recent books hoping (but not expecting) that Kage would regain the spirit of those earlier chapters. I seem to be in the minority on this however.
I'd still recommend the book to any fans of the earlier Company books because it does resolve everything but it's not my desired ending.

I know that this is a fantasy novel, any concept of logic or science or even coherence suffers mightily in this book, but even with the Hollywood
logic behind it, one must admit Kage Baker has a gift for writing and storytelling. I have read all of the company series and if you can enjoy the fantasy, being unconcerned with anything approaching a logical or coherent plot flow, this is your book. I think Kage will have a greater success with her new fantasy novels. Enjoyable, if not perplexing. Why the rating buttons aren't working with Amazon is anybody's guess, but
she will be getting alot of 5 stars since the rating buttons disappeared.

I loved the early Company novels. Over time, however, Baker started writing more of these stories in novella and short story format (primary the former). And like a lot of short fiction, one is bound to like some tales and not others.

That's probably why I had a contradictory response to this last book in the series. The action jumps from one character (or set of characters) to another. And while I completely enjoyed the antics of some characters (I've always had a warm spot for Lewis), other parts of the action left me... well, not cold, but lukewarm.

She *does* wrap up the story, so you know what happens after the Silence falls. But some parts of it are more satisfying than others. I don't mind the cavalry coming over the hill, and the whole notion of the cyborgs is that they have some pretty cool powers, but it's possible to overdo it -- and in a few places, I think the author does so. (Any examples I'd give would be spoilers, sorry.)

If you like the whole Company universe, you'll probably find this last book irresistible. But while it's an enjoyable read, you might find that your attention wanders at times. Mine did.

I've been following this series since the beginning ... afraid as we approach the end of the series that it wouldn't live up to the building promise. But I've never read such a strong finish in a series. I'm elated, and can't stop mulling over the lasting images and thoughts about the characters. Kage Baker incorporates the best of speculative fiction, building a fantasy world so real, it seems palpable -- and at the same time, she has built up a huge cast of characters, each in impossible physical circumstances and bound up in equally dismaying psychological circumstances. She plays so deftly with language that each character is immediately recognizable in a single sentence when she switches from one thread to another in this amazingly complex story, as if their characters and dilemmas each have unique syntaxes. These stories have all left me so tense at the end of each volume ... Whew, finally, I can relax and start the whole series over again. (Lewis!!)

In this final novel of the Company we not only see wicked "Dr Zeus" receive its comeuppance, but we also learn child cyborg care, as Mendoza regains her wits and is coping with the triad Nicholas/Edward/Alec in a very unexpected manner (unexpected especially for two members of the triad). We see one of the most clumsiest attempts at multiple murder and, also, Kage Baker's black humour at its most luxuriant in the final banquet before the silence attended by Labienus, Nennius, Aegeus and other less than savoury cyborgs; we'll see miserable Bugleg cringing before the Pale people and poor Lewis having his wounds healed. A feast of the imagination!

As a female I absolutely LOVE Mendoza's happy ending! She gets to have it all, and I mean ALL! You Go Girl!!!!

Seriously, this is a completely satisfying ending to this series! I am amazed that the author was able to keep all of the "balls in the air" for a full and quirky happy ending for all of the cyborgs we have come to love!

I am SO SORRY that this series is over. I hope that Kage Baker will start another series SOON!