Kage Baker's Company Novels

Kage Baker's Company novels are my latest bibliographic obsession. Rich, complex stories; a large cast of immortal cyborgs with personalities diverse enough to suit most every taste; a centuries-long plot which may (or may not) be master-minded by a shadowy, sinister Company of mortals who created the cyborgs; detailed settings from 500,000 BCE jungles to 24th century London, with myriad visits to San Francisco throughout the ages—what's not to like?

The basic conceit behind the series—a 24th century Company acquires the secrets of time travel and immortality—comes with a catch. Humans can time travel only to the past; they can then travel forward to their starting time, but no further into the future. In order to turn a profit from the time travel trick (they ARE a Company, after all), the Company "rescues" orphans in the dim past and transforms them into immortal cyborgs. The cyborgs, indoctrinated to believe they are serving humanity, save valuable art works and soon-to-be-extinct plants and animals in the past. (With the keen eye of hindsight and a good set of history books called the Temporal Concordance, the Company knows exactly when and where to find the lost artifacts.) The plunder is sent to the future, where the Company sells the art to private collectors and patents the cures harvested from the biological materials.

In addition to the standalone stories within each book, two long-term plots run through the series: power and romance. The romance centers on the immortal Mendoza and her mortal lover(s). The power trip comes from the struggle between the Company, the more ambitious cyborgs who want to overthrow their mortal masters, and the lower-echelon cyborgs who just want to get along and do good, where possible. Everything is complicated by the fact that the Temporal Concordance stops dead in the year 2355, when The Silence falls, and no one knows what happens next.

The series also poses philosophical questions. Would you really want to live forever? What would happen to love and marriage in such a situation? If you rescue the Library of Alexandria from the fires of the barbarian hordes, is it reasonable to expect to return a profit? Under which (if any) circumstances do you owe someone your life?

My addiction to the series began last fall while browsing through Borderlands Books kvetching about the lack of a new Connie Willis novel. The ever-knowledgeable Jude suggested Kage Baker instead and I bought In the Garden of Iden, the first novel in the Company series. I was intrigued by its premises, but I wasn't really hooked until I skipped to book 4, The Graveyard Game (books 2 and 3 are difficult-to-impossible to find).

I would actually recommend that new readers begin with The Graveyard Game, then return to In the Garden of Iden if they want to backfill the plot. The first three books in the series primarily focus on Mendoza, her struggles with becoming an immortal and with her love for a mortal man. Unfortunately, Mendoza is a royal pain, and I was never able to identify with her, so I was not able to enjoy her romantic tribulations; of course, your experience may vary.

Starting in The Graveyard Game (book 4), Baker concentrates on the larger issues and the long-term struggles; she also brings to the fore her male characters who, oddly enough, she handles better than her female heroine. The immortals Joseph and Lewis are believable and likeable; their drunken spree at Ghiradelli Square (chocolate intoxicates the immortals) should be on the list of best all-time comic scenes. And soon we meet the fascinating Alec Checkerfield, pirate rogue and seventh Earl of Finsbury in a thoroughly decadent future. By the time Mendoza reappears and reunites with at least some of the other characters in book 7, The Machine's Child, she's had a much needed personality makeover.

Fortunately for me and all Company readers, the eighth and final book in the series (which will *finally* solve the mystery of The Silence that falls in 2355) is due out in January 2007. When the author spoke at Borderlands this October, she wouldn't give away any secrets about the denouement. But she did say she believes good should be rewarded and evil punished—and that she believe Lewis, my favorite character (who is "currently" in terrible peril) is a good man.