Amazon.com: Mendoza in Hollywood: A Novel of the Company: Kage Baker: Books

Amazon.com
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

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Mendoza in Hollywood: A Novel of the Company (Hardcover)

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought