The Life of the World to Come

The Company #5

by Kage Baker

From idea to flesh to myth, this is the story of Alec Seventh Earl of Finsbury, pirate, renegade, hero, anomaly, Mendoza's once and future love.

Mendoza is a Preserver, which means that she's sent back from the twenty-fourth century by Dr. Zeus, Incorporated - the Company - to recover things from the past which would otherwise be lost. She's a botanist, a good one. She's an immortal, indestructible cyborg. And she's a woman in love.

In sixteenth century England, Mendoza fell for a native, a renegade, a tall, dark, not handsome man who radiated determination and sexuality. He died a martyr's death, burned at the stake. In nineteenth century America, Mendoza fell for an eerily identical native, a renegade, a tall, dark, not handsome man who radiated determination and sexuality. When he died, she killed six men to avenge him.

The Company didn't like that - bad for business. But she's immortal and indestructible, so they couldn't hurt her. Instead, they dumped her in the Back Way Back.

Meanwhile, back in the future, three eccentric geniuses sit in a parlor at Oxford University and play at being the new Inklings, the heirs of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Working for Dr. Zeus, they create heroic stories and give them flesh, myths in blood and DNA to protect the future from the World to Come, the fearsome Silence that will fall on the world in 2355. They create a hero, a tall, dark, not handsome man who radiates determination and sexuality.

"Now," stranded 150,000 years in the past, there are no natives for Mendoza to fall in love with. She tends a garden of maize, and she pines for the man she lost, twice. For Three. Thousand. Years.

Then, one day, out of the sky and out of the future comes a renegade, a timefaring pirate, a tall, dark, not handsome man who radiates determination and sexuality. This is the beginning of the end.

Genres: Science Fiction, Time Travel, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Adventure

392 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 2004

About the author

Born June 10, 1952, in Hollywood, California, and grew up there and in Pismo Beach, present home. Spent 12 years in assorted navy blue uniforms obtaining a good parochial school education and numerous emotional scars. Rapier wit developed as defense mechanism to deflect rage of larger and more powerful children who took offense at abrasive, condescending and arrogant personality in a sickly eight-year-old. Family: 2 parents, 6 siblings, 4 nieces, 2 nephews. Husbands: 0. Children: 0.

Prior occupations: graphic artist and mural painter, several lower clerical positions which could in no way be construed as a career, and (over a period of years for the Living History Centre) playwright, bit player, director, teacher of Elizabethan English for the stage, stage manager and educational program assistant coordinator. Presently reengaged in the above-listed capacities for the LHC's triumphant reincarnation, AS YOU LIKE IT PRODUCTIONS.

20 years of total immersion research in Elizabethan as well as other historical periods has paid off handsomely in a working knowledge of period speech and details.

In spare time (ha) reads: any old sea stories by Marryat, the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brien, the Hornblower books, ANYTHING by Robert Louis Stevenson, Raymond Chandler, Thorne Smith, Herman Melville (except Pierre, or the Ambiguities, which stinks) Somerset Maugham, George MacDonald Frasier.

Now happily settled in beautiful Pismo Beach, Clam Capital of the World, in charming seaside flat which is unfortunately not haunted by ghost of dashing sea captain. Avid gardener, birdwatcher, spinster aunt and Jethro Tull fan.


http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/rip-kage-...

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

mileage may vary, depending on how much the reader appreciates this series' most mysterious character: the often reborn/once a religious fanatic/once a gun-slinging secret agent/currently a poor little rich boy/and cybernetic pirate/and always horny homo sapien-adjacent being now known as Alec Checkerfield. he's my favorite character in The Company, so I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which is basically a slow lifting of all the veils shrouding this bizarre and wonderful and surprisingly relatable fellow. the series' protagonist Mendoza is an equally fantastic character and she deserves a romantic lead with all of the trimmings.

past entries in this series have been more... secretive. they have concealed their true natures. ostensibly a science fictional series that spends time in multiple past eras, they are also each something quite different. the first, a romance; the second, a comedy of manners; the third, a memento mori; the fourth, a cold case mystery. this fifth book is a shift, as it is a nearly-straightforward biography. if a reader isn't interested in the life of Alec Checkerfield (or his prior iterations, Nicholas Harpole and Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax), then this book will be a drag.

for me, it was tons of fun. Baker's style remains light and breezy. her primary target also remains: hypocritical group-thinkers who make decisions that impact lives but eschew all responsibility for those decisions. in The Company series, they are literally "the Company" - company men and women. in prior books, these villains do their villainous thing while only being glimpsed briefly, in scenes where their laughable softness are highlighted. we finally get to meet a group of these group-thinkers and they are as pathetic (and as amusing) as one might imagine.

as always, Baker has an agonizing devastation in store for the reader. she loves to make a light fluffy cake, one with a secret filling full of nails, razors, barbed wire, the annihilation of the human spirit. but still light and fluffy!

3.5 stars, rounded up

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Kage Baker had interesting ideas, particularly about time travel. Where I find difficulty with her books is the relationships she writes, which don't ring completely true to me. Whether that's due to her Asperger's or whether it was deliberate, I don't know.

Who doesn't like a good time travel paradox? Most stories in the genre feature one and Baker's series is no exception. Dr. Zeus company is a shadowy, mysterious entity, it's mission is murky. But, once again, we get a bit more information revealed and the suggestion that interference from the future creates the company, whose employees then create the company…and round and round we go! This is the issue that is really keeping me reading at this point.

Still, it was nice to see Mendoza again. She makes her appearance on the very first page, delighting me since I really missed her in the previous book. Her immortal outlook is fun, despite her obsession with Alec/Edward/Nicholas. In this book, we get the back story about how this guy keeps recurring (and it gets pretty silly by the end).

Baker takes the idea of being politically correct and pushes it to the outer limits in her 24th century. Current virtuous prejudices have become law in parts of her world. Almost everything that brings any comfort or fun is verboten: coffee, tea, sugar, chocolate, dairy products, and meat, not to mention being outdoors and exercise. Of course there is a black market. For example, Ireland stubbornly insists on producing dairy products. But most people hide in their homes and play video games. Few are able to read. And because you need a permit to reproduce, populations are way down. Sex is frowned upon as “animalistic," leaving sleep as one of the few pleasures remaining. For everyone's sake, I hope we get to skip this particular future!

Book Number 443 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

February 12, 2004

Love this series, hate the covers. That's really rather unappealing, don't you think?

***

January 26, 2015

More than a decade later and I love this even more. The covers are still embarrassing as hell with art derived from some other story and weird giant heads floating above it all.

Okay, so now Mendoza is being punished by The Company who've sent her Way Back (150k years back) on Catalina Island. Well, the weather is good, and she's got time to work on her maize. Then one day a ship crashes into her corn and it just happens to be yet another incarnation of her true love. This time it's Alec Checkerfield from the 24th century. He's a pirate. Adventures ensue.

Two things about this book: one, Baker seems to throw her hands up in the air, and starts to really revel in the silliness inherent in situation. If you can have anything then of course you can have an AI pirate captain, and why wouldn't you? But two is that even as she really embraces the fun of her fantasy, she also gets rather more serious about the problems of her future, and starts trying to fix it. Imagining a dystopia extrapolated from things that irk one in the present is easy. Coming up with plausible solutions is hard.

I think it's been overused in reviews, and I tend to avoid it, but I'm just going to put this out there: the series becomes truly rollicking at this point.

Library copy

[Jamie Collins · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is my least favorite of the Company novels so far, even if it thoroughly, almost methodically, explains the mystery behind Mendoza's reincarnated doomed lover. The writing is quite good, often funny, but this just isn't my kind of story.

This one is set far in the future, only a few years before the mysterious silence is due to begin in the year 2355. I'm not enjoying Baker's depiction of the future nearly as much as I enjoyed reading about her immortal operatives living in the past. I dislike magical, jolly computers, and I wasn't as amused as the author wanted me to be by the trio of bumbling historical reenactors playing God.

The story focuses almost completely on Alec, another incarnation of Medoza's Elizabethan lover, who is the object of her eternal obsession. There is actually very little of Mendoza in the book - she's stuck in prehistoric California pining hopelessly over Nicholas/Edward/Alec. My favorite character, the immortal Joseph, isn't in the book at all, and I missed him and the other recurring characters.

Oh well, I'm still interested enough to read the next one.

[Phoenixfalls · Rating 4 out of 5]

A word, first, on the publishing. Sometime between The Graveyard Game and this novel, Kage Baker switched to Tor. I am extremely grateful for that. The cover design is much sleeker, and there is a very definite style to the series covers from this point on, making it immediately obvious when you see the books lined up that they are, in fact, a series. The jacket descriptions, too, are much improved, as you can hopefully see from the one I included above. I just wish that Tor had the rights to the entire series, because the first four look very out-of-place on the shelf now. . .

To the story. The Graveyard Game felt unfocused, like nothing more than a transition; The Life of the World to Come does not have that problem. It's still told from the third-person, and does jump around in time, but it is entirely the story of Alec Checkerfield. Like In the Garden of Iden, it is a coming-of-age novel in the classic sense -- we see Alec from his very generation through to a major trial-by-fire and a falling in love. The one major issue I have with this novel, however, is the world Baker created for Alec to come of age in.

The future she has envisioned is pretty dire. It has been through several apocalypses of various sorts, and the few people that are left have emerged incredibly privileged, with advanced technology and all the resources of the planet at their disposal. As we got a glimpse of in Sky Coyote and The Graveyard Game, they have taken the supposedly moral high road on so many issues that they have completely whitewashed their own existence -- no real food (all stimulants and animal products are banned), no real sex, an abhorrence of violence of any kind, and all that extends so far that they can't even read books about such things, so they also have none of the cultural awareness that would at least come with education through literature. This means that they are perennial children, and Alec, as a product of that culture (though he naturally rebels against it) remains a child throughout as well.

Mendoza's previous two lovers were men with great strength of character, as noted in the description; Alec seems so weak compared to them that I highly doubt Mendoza would love him if he weren't genetically identical to her other loves. (Baker does provide a neat little explanation of why Mendoza fell so quickly for all three of the men, however, so maybe I'm wrong about that.) This makes the novel much less involving on an emotional level than the previous four, because all of the previous ones (yes, even the transitional The Graveyard Game) were imbued with passion -- in the two from Mendoza's perspective, passion for Harpole and Fairfax; in the other two Joseph's and Lewis' passion for Mendoza. The Life of the World to Come was more abstract. It moved the plot forward immensely, and I giggled at all the right places, but there were no moments that sank into my chest and made me feel. Even Alec's trial-by-fire seemed somewhat academic -- Alec himself simply wasn't mature enough to grow as I would expect from it.

But I would still strongly recommend this series, and I would still say that The Life of the World to Come is stronger than The Graveyard Game. Baker's prose is consistently good, the story moves along quickly, the ideas are fun to play with, and (best of all) each novel is a complete story arc that nonetheless moves forward the larger series story arc. This novel introduces some new players to the game (and I loved the Captain -- if more had been from his perspective I think Baker would have captured the passion of the earlier books in his love for his boy Alec) and gets us much closer to finding out what happens in 2355. I am still looking forward to each book, which is pretty darned good for a series of this length, I think.

[Robert Nolin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The central idea of the Company novels-- that time travel is possible but changing recorded history is not--is very cool. Even cooler is the idea of building immortal cyborgs way back at the dawn of mankind, and having them rescue artworks, species, and even whole tribes, all before they disappear (as in the second book, "Sky Coyote"). Unfortunately, Baker decided to "reincarnate" the love interest from the first book in her third outing, "Mendoza in Hollywood," and that original concept turned into little more than romanticized wish fulfillment. By the fifth book, "The Life of the World to Come," Baker's finally worked out a reason that Mendoza's lover from the first book keeps reappearing, somehow reincarnated (three times, with this book). Instead of mining the possibilities of the original concept, the series devolves into a sort of Mary Sue love story crossing the centuries in a very unconvincing way.

It turns out that the three incarnations of Mr. Wonderful are all the product of three bumbling minions of the Company, living in London during the 24th century, when, we assume, the Company was developing time travel and cyborg technology. These Company men cannot read (no one in the 24th century can, for some reason) and seem more like refugees from some late '70's BBC sitcom than brilliant scientists capable of mastering time and space. I suppose this is meant to be ironically funny, in a British nudge-nudge-wink-wink sort of way, but it falls completely flat. There are hints that these bumblers are actually the pawns of the *real* powers running the Company, so I suppose they don't really need to know much to do their jobs, but it begs the question: why would the Company need them at all? It's just dumb, and painful to read.

Alec (the latest incarnation of Mr. Wonderful), like his predecessors, is a dishy guy. He's very tall, has very big hands (and you know that means, nudge-nudge-wink-wink), is absurdly good in the sack and girls fall all over the big lug. His buds all have annoying names beginning with the letter "B", like Balkister, Binscarth, and Blaise. Bincscarth, for no apparent reason, talks just like Elmer Fudd, unable to pronounce the letter "R." I found that particularly offensive. Speech impediments aren't funny, and besides, wouldn't they be eliminated by the 24th century? Then there's Captain Henry Morgan, Alec's AI best friend. Although Alec can't read, at age seven he manages to hack into his childhood computer companion. R-r-r-right. Alec turns him into a pirate, and for the rest of the book we're treating to a character who seems to be stuck in Talk Like a Pirate Day. It gets tiresome.

This isn't really science fiction. More like science fantasy. The original idea that you can't change recorded history is mostly out the window by now. The Enforcers--Cro-Magnon immortals--commit genocide against the Great Goat Cult, in order to allow civilization to get started. But think about that. Obviously, civilization began without any Company interference. Otherwise, there'd never have been a Company to go back and mess with...oh never mind. It's just too silly. A good time travel yarn manages to avoid knotty paradoxes, but this one just keeps digging itself into a deeper temporal hole.

It's strange. Ten years ago, I loved these books. Needing a comfort re-read, I cracked them open again. Somehow, time has changed me, I suppose. Either that, or someone went back in time and rewrote the books. I sure don't remember them being this bad. Hmm.

[MargaretDH · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the fifth book in the Company series, and I'm still not sure what Baker is trying to do. I'm still having fun though.

In this round, we finally meet the trio responsible for much of the decisions of the company, and find out why Mendoza keeps running into her true love and losing him tragically. Surprise! The trio are a couple of nerdy dopes, with almost no understanding of how their actions might affect their employees, who they feel possessive of, like anyone with a special toy. It doesn't help that in their future, the humourless vegans/tee-totalling/sex police/no-fun-of-any-kind types have taken over.

But there are some fun adventure shenanigans here, and a lot more actual time travel than other novels. Plus, our new hero has a very cool AI friend who helps him out. Plus, there's some psychodrama to keep the whole thing interesting.

This book resolves some things, but also leaves a lot of plot dangling. And it looks like the next book doesn't pick them up. I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading this series, but you should know what you're getting into. It's a weird, shifting ride, and I'm extremely curious to know how much of this Baker planned out in advance, and how much is seat-of-the-pants.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Returned to this abandoned read after at least five years. I realized that the problem I had was with the book format, and once I got it as an ebook I zipped through it.

It was nice to revisit the world and the characters of The Company, especially Mendoza and all of the different incarnations of Alec / Nicholas / Edward that keep haunting poor Mendoza throughout time.

Nothing has ever surpassed the amazing first book in the series, In the Garden of Iden, but I was glad to spend some time with the characters nonetheless. As far as time travel stories goes, this continues to be such a treat.

[Kathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This installment of the Company series focuses on Alec, the latest incarnation of the Nicholas/Edward recombinant and the true love of Botanist Mendoza. And while it follows Alec’s life from the time he is a boy through early adulthood, it also follows the story of his creators. And what a tangled, very messy tale it is!

[Brian Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far this was my least favorite of the Company books. I just don't find Alec nearly as compelling a character as the other viewpoint characters, and the world that could have produced the Company (IMO) doesn't match with the world that Baker describes the Company actually coming from. That cognitive dissonance - that the secret conspiracy of time travelling plutocrat royalists constructs a society where everyone forgets how to make Vegan food taste good and gives up their coffee - ends up being an awfully flimsy foundation. The book starts strong with Mendoza, picks up when Alec starts actually unraveling the Company's conspiracy at the end, but the middle is something of a muddle with new characters learning plot points the reader already knows. I'm committed to want to see the series through, but this was a weak link in the chain.

[Jeremy Preacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great. The "big reveal" that the Company is basically run by a bunch of future-D&D style nerds with no real understanding of life or grip on the consequences of their actions is hilarious, and Alec's parallel story is a great little adventure/psychodrama. I wince a little at the "the future will suck because the ultraliberal feminist/vegan/thought police will take over" trope, especially since it hasn't aged well at all, but it does provide some amusing sources of conflict. My only gripe is that it ends without wrapping anything up, and the next book in the sequence doesn't continue the story thread at all.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Time travel escapism with many mysteries left to be unraveled. I am anxious for us to get to 2355, the year of the Silence--and starting to think that whatever happens to humanity then, it was well deserved. I do have some issues in this one with the mechanics of time travel, because you have executives tinkering in the past from 2350 or so, and having to wait for reports to come in from the 16th and 19th centuries. Why? I kept hoping the lag in information would be explained and it really wasn't ever, to my satisfaction. Otherwise a compelling read and I'm pressing on into the next books.

[The Fizza · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Stars - I liked that this book stopped the main action that seemed to be the focus of the series to get into the life of Alec and that was a good choice. I enjoyed seeing things from another character's POV and learning more of the mysteries, for the most part.

Not as good as the first book in the series, but aside from The Empress of Mars (which is a side book) few books in the series have been. Still it's a very vibrant and well told series and this book in an integrate part of the overall story.

A MUST READ for anyone who's started this series!

[Steven Bragg · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is just not that readable, as it suffers from two flaws. First, the evil folks at Zeus who have been manipulating people for centuries turn out to be a group of bumbling twits. Hello, where did the dramatic tension go with that decision? Also, the computer mentor for the male lead has the personality of a five year-old drunk on pirate movies. Again, what was the author thinking? Instead of being drawn into a gripping story, it is hard not to wince.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This started off kind of meh for me, but then I grew to like Alec and the Captain and everyone else much more. Continues to develop overarching Company storylines but also resolved some big questions and raised others. I wish Kage Baker did more foreshadowing that could be picked up in hindsight - I love crazy cross book plotting.

Overall a fun installment. I think I liked In the Garden of Iden the best, then Graveyard Game . . . hmm.

Still reading the series!

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of time travel plot twists, as we venture into the future in this 5th installment of the series. Future people are so sheltered that they seem like grown up children, naive,idealistic, and unintentionally brutal. I enjoyed it. But what's the deal with the cover art? Really ugly, and doesn't fit the feel of the story at all.

[Layla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Baker is brilliant at writing about Company operatives in the past. She is not so good at writing about the future.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only enjoyed the last quarter of this book. The story of Mendoza's loves Edward and Nicholas. Found most of it dry and dull.

[Deborah Replogle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of The Company science fiction series. Liked it very much.

[Sir He-Man · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed book 5 so much.

Things I liked: fast paced, great dialogue, intriguing plots, good continuity, and a very nice theme concerning dissociative disorder with a twist. The heist theme was also good. Love a good heist in a science fiction story if it's pulled off well.

Things that were meh: The Captain as a character doesn't evolve much and I think that's a shame. As an AI I think he had way more potential and the pirate vocabulary gets grating after a while. Also I wanted to know more about the different levels of future society, which on the surface resembles that of Brave New World to some degree. The descriptive writing could use some work but I'm giving this one five stars purely on how well I enjoy it as opposed to measuring it purely for its prose.

Many pleasant surprises awaited me in book 5. Mendoza is back, but mainly this is about the enigmatic beau who keeps dying on her. Nicholas Harpole in the first incarnation, then Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, and now Alec Checkerfield in the 2300s. Alec's identity is explained in full, as well as other secrets the Company doesn't want anyone to know about. The people behind his particular existence and genetic manipulation are future nerds that live to romanticize the past, which is our time. They wax nostalgic about the good old days. There's an ongoing joke about how even fruit juice is hard to come by in a future where everything unhealthy has been made illegal. So they manage to get prune juice and they pretend it's wine or sherry. It's so pathetic as to be laughable. Even lighting a fire in a fireplace is enough to get the police involved.

In fact, the future is very dismal. Young Alec is abandoned early on by his parents and the couple charged with raising him don't have a license to hug him in public. Many of these little touches are important for indicating how humanity has become used to being weak and pathetic, docile and timid, unable to defend themselves. I'm sure that doesn't bode well for the issue of The Silence, the year 2355 where the Company doesn't have any contact or knowledge of what is to come. We get the idea a war is brewing and Alec is on the outskirts of that war.

I had issues with the idea that this future ignores so many basics of human psychology but then cultism, which take the form of new religions Baker sets up (Ephesian Church, militant veganism) could explain some of that. Still, it seems unlikely that humanity would be able to root out all aggression or the desire to question authority without the help of genetic modification. So either that's taken place with the lower classes or maybe there are other things going on we just don't get to see. I hope that's explored in the later books.

All in all, a satisfying addition to this series.

[Jenny Yates · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, this is fantastic. However, I wouldn’t read it unless you’ve read the first three in the series first. I’m not sure how much sense it would make without a good background. This one focuses on Alec, who meets Mendoza early in the novel. She recognizes him as Nicholas, aka Edward, the man that she keeps falling in love with, in various time periods. In this book, we find out why this happens.

We also get to know some of the leadership of Dr. Zeus Incorporated, aka The Company. Like most people in the 24th century, these three – Rutherford, Chatterji and Ellsworth-Howard - don’t know how to read, and they’ve never seen a tree or tasted a glass of wine. The 24th century is a bland, boring place, where do-gooders have taken over, and where the culture of the past is constantly looted to provide a thrill or two – since there is absolutely no culture in the present.

So this trio have their own little retro project, creating a heroic figure. Alec isn’t supposed to know about his own origins, but he finds out, and he also finds out that he’s been manipulated to do something horrible. In this fast-paced, adventurous book – as always, laced with humor – Alec fulfills his heroic destiny by turning on those who made him.

[Ronald Spitzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The saga continues with Alex and Mendoza plus Captain Morgan. Depressing future and hopefully someday change will be forced. I don't like to read about dystopian futures and this one definitely proceeds from the trends made obvious in the 1960s, if not earlier. In 2023 we are closer to this type of future than I find comfortable, and the trends keep moving this way. Baker's depressing future may well fully arrive in reality long before she anticipated. I keep having the thought in today's real world that I have time traveled to the future and I don't like it here. Good character development for Alec. The good part of all of this that there is hope for the fictional future in these novels, and so I keep reading. I need to find more books in this series about the Company to see what the many characters do next.

[Michael Dean Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

This fifth novel in The Company series completes the introduction to the cast of protagonists and antagonists about the time traveling enterprise from the 24th century, Dr. Zeus. Be prepared for the next book, well, an anthology arranged as a novel.

Book 6, as noted above, will take a thematic approach to examine elite privilege, entitlement, and condescending views of the mass of society. Dark and disturbing in 2024 as it was in 2004. More later. I am halfway through the Book-6 anthology of stories examining the factions in The Company, Dr. Zeus, from 2355, the year to be reckoned with ;)

[Jen Fries · Rating 3 out of 5]

I accidentally started this series mid-stream, on the 5th book. However, from what I can tell, this novel is the beginning of a second major story arc, so it was not daunting to start here. I got a bit tired of the trope that in the good old days of the swashbuckling British Empire, men were real men, who drank and were not quislings. This book was entertaining - time travel, a cool AI Captain character, and the desire to be a good person, thwarted - but I don’t know if I’ll continue on.

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2020/0...

In the fifth Company book, we find out much more about Mendoza's love interest, have interesting adventures in the future (with an AI who is a PIRATE, and yall know I love supersmart and funny AIs!), see some of the Company brain trust in action, and have some metaphysical conversations. I LOVED this one and it ends on an awesome note and I am immediately starting the next one.

[aetnensis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probabilmente sarebbe un 3.5. Non mi piace troppo lo stile di scrittura di Kage Baker, ma alcune idee mi hanno intrigata, sia per quanto riguarda il cyberspazio sia per i viaggi nel tempo. Anche il protagonista non l'ho preso troppo in simpatia ad essere onesta. A quanto pare dopo di questo non sono più stati tradotti in italiano ed è un peccato perché verso la fine, quando tutto sembra quadrare e la storia si fa molto interessante, si resta con un pesantissimo "to be continued".

[Tom Loock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like being rewarded for sticking with 'The Company'-series. With 'Mendoza in Hollywood' (Vol. 3) I almost gave up, but this one (Vol. 5) ... this one is a real gem.

Mendoza takes two steps back, and her lover(s) three steps forward. A whole cast of new characters - curators, pirates, (more) cyborgs enter the frame, each one interesting with a promise of more to come.

Highly recommended!

[Dinah · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a couple enjoyable enough books, with some bright spots, it was very fun to get back on the rollercoaster again with this one. Eager to head on to the next book in the series now!

One thing I've enjoyed about the series has been getting perspectives from different characters. Nice to get more of that within one book here.

[Carolyn F. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know this book is written differently than the others in the series but it's set in the future. I don't understand a lot of the low ratings. I'm hoping the next time we see Alec/Edward/Nicholas, they have their poop together. And I hope they get to Mendoza before it's too late to turn back.

[Adriana Porter Felt · Rating 3 out of 5]

These books are not terribly good, and the fifth one starts to crumble under the weight of a very complex plot. But I can't stop reading them. (Even though the seeming lack of professional editing drives me nuts.)