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The Company #8
The Sons of Heaven
This is how it ends:
In The Sons of Heaven, the forces gathering to seize power finally move on the Company.
Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, resurrected Victorian superman, plans for world domination.
The immortal Mendoza makes a desperate bargain to delay him.
Enforcer Budu, assisted by Joseph, enlists an unexpected ally in his plans to free his old warriors and bring judgment on his former masters.
The mortal masters of the Company, terrified of a coup, invest in a plan they believe will terminate their cyborg servants—unaware that they have been tricked into doing so by Labienus, who intends to spark a rebellion when the immortals discover the betrayal.
Meanwhile, Executive Facilitator Suleyman uses his intelligence operation to uncover the secret of Alpha-Omega, vital to the mortals’ survival.
And Literature Preservationist Lewis wakes to find himself blinded, crippled, left with no weapons but his voice and memory, and the friendship of one extraordinary little girl.
In The Sons of Heaven, the forces gathering to seize power finally move on the Company.
Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, resurrected Victorian superman, plans for world domination.
The immortal Mendoza makes a desperate bargain to delay him.
Enforcer Budu, assisted by Joseph, enlists an unexpected ally in his plans to free his old warriors and bring judgment on his former masters.
The mortal masters of the Company, terrified of a coup, invest in a plan they believe will terminate their cyborg servants—unaware that they have been tricked into doing so by Labienus, who intends to spark a rebellion when the immortals discover the betrayal.
Meanwhile, Executive Facilitator Suleyman uses his intelligence operation to uncover the secret of Alpha-Omega, vital to the mortals’ survival.
And Literature Preservationist Lewis wakes to find himself blinded, crippled, left with no weapons but his voice and memory, and the friendship of one extraordinary little girl.
431 pages, Hardcover
First published July 10, 2007
7 people are currently reading
532 people want to read
About the author
Kage Baker
162 books355 followersBorn 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-...
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-...
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August 21, 2023
***100 Days of Summer 2023***
Reading prompt: Book that is categorized as alternate history
Virtual 12 sided dice roll: 2
For seven books, Kage Baker has teased us with knowledge of the Silence. Now, in the eighth novel, everyone is preparing for the end of history, 2355. Since Dr Zeus Corporation has no records beyond this date, it is assumed that there will be a significant shift in reality. There are lots of theories but no facts. Each faction makes plans based on their own desires and preferences, planning the future in their own image.
As readers, we get to spend time with all of the various interest groups and hear what they're plotting and see where they are going to conflict with each other. Meanwhile, Mendoza and Edward Bell-Fairfax are busy solving the problem of Nicholas and Alec needing to be re-embodied.
The ending seems to wrap things up, maybe not neatly, but finishing the story arc. And yet, there are more books. It will be interesting to see what those are all about.
Book number 502 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project
Reading prompt: Book that is categorized as alternate history
Virtual 12 sided dice roll: 2
For seven books, Kage Baker has teased us with knowledge of the Silence. Now, in the eighth novel, everyone is preparing for the end of history, 2355. Since Dr Zeus Corporation has no records beyond this date, it is assumed that there will be a significant shift in reality. There are lots of theories but no facts. Each faction makes plans based on their own desires and preferences, planning the future in their own image.
As readers, we get to spend time with all of the various interest groups and hear what they're plotting and see where they are going to conflict with each other. Meanwhile, Mendoza and Edward Bell-Fairfax are busy solving the problem of Nicholas and Alec needing to be re-embodied.
The ending seems to wrap things up, maybe not neatly, but finishing the story arc. And yet, there are more books. It will be interesting to see what those are all about.
Book number 502 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project
July 31, 2007
Beautiful prose, atmospheric mood, but I think I'm disappointed. There is a big, fat Deus ex machina in this book, and I'm not sure I buy the subsequent resolution of the conflict between immortals and normal men. The biggest obstacle to my enjoyment is Mendoza's passive reaction to Edward, whose Victorian self-righteousness leads him to behave in ways that feel oppressive and criminal to me. The tone reminds me of 70's era romance novels where the heroine comes to realize that the hero didn't rape her, he opened her to new experiences. Then she thanks him for it.
I'll keep thinking about it, and may change my mind on the re-read.
I'll keep thinking about it, and may change my mind on the re-read.
October 25, 2023
September 2019: ONE STAR, aka I regret ever reading this book.
Well, I'm properly gutted.
I have loved this series since it first debuted. I was a young teenager, and a friend of mine recommended The Garden of Iden -- I very nearly didn't give back her borrowed copy, I was so in love. It was funny; it was nerdy. It was history; it was scifi. It was a revelation, and so were its characters.
Then came Sky Coyote, Mendoza in Hollywood, and The Graveyard Game. Years later I still have vivid memories of missed sleep and no regrets, my heart twisting with each new reveal in this tricky, complex tale.
Then Black Projects, White Knights and The Life of the World to Come. Both fine and dandy, I thought, but a bit abbreviated -- like they were the warm-up for something, filling in the blanks to really send the finale home. I read The Machine's Child -- I purchased that sucker in hardcover, and there is truly no greater sign of my devotion -- and a pit opened up in my stomach. A pit of uncertainty and, for the very first time, doubt in Baker's vision.
I put off The Sons of Heaven. It came out and I purchased my copy, but I held off. I told myself I wasn't ready for the story of the Company to end, that it was the usual reluctance of any reader to leave a world she truly loves. A friend of mine wrote a spoiler-free review where she mentioned her own disappointment, and I thought, well, The Sons of Heaven will keep.
That was over ten years ago, and this year I told myself to just bite the bullet. I've grown, I told myself, I'm a more critical reader now and it won't actually hurt me to read a bad book be a beloved author, the way it would have when I was young. Forewarned is forearmed, right? I was going in with basement-level expectations.
Reader, it was worse than I could have ever imagined.
This book is a goddamned horrorshow. There's a line in the last third, where Baker asks the reader "what were you expecting," a "testosterone-laden" display of violence? But although she doesn't succumb to a shoot-em-up, "testosterone" pervades this book in the sense of utter and unquestioned patriarchal values, Baker's own casual misogyny roaring to life with teeth and fangs. I can't be specific without going into spoilers, but if you want a general warning: think of every truly toxic trope of, say, '80s-era romance novels. The really gross ones. You know exactly what I mean: the shit that gives that genre a bad name, even when it's clearly indulgent fantasy with no pretense to edification.
They're ALL in this book, and delivered with awful, self-important seriousness.
Besides that, it's as if Baker took everything wonderful about the first four books and chucked it out the window. Do you care at all about Lewis, Mendoza, or Joseph, aka the primary cast of the initial novels? Then you are shit out of luck, my friend, they barely feature. Joseph is passive and peripheral. Mendoza is a walking . Lewis is only there to move someone else's plot forward. I've always wondered why so many of the later books in this series were just short stories about minor characters -- turns out those are the only characters to actually DO anything in the finale, and to follow the action and reveals you had better have read every single anthology. Oh, and be prepared for an entire new cast of creatures to take center stage as well.
Or maybe you're interested regardless, to see the conclusion of Mendoza's romance with Project Adonai? Fucking brace yourself.
If that stomach-churning content doesn't exhaust you, you're still in for a disappointing read. Or at least I was. Baker feels off the leash in this book, and her usual writing peccadilloes, totally unrestrained, began to tire fast: blatant Anglophilia, female characters whose only role is to care about or look after the men who actually do shit, and being a little too much in love with the "cleverness" of her characters to the point where everyone's dialogue began to sound the same. The deus ex machina elements from earlier books is carried over, with even more added, just in a different direction -- instead of the device to get the characters out of trouble, this one is inserted specifically to get them into it.
It all reads hollow, terribly hollow. And just when you think Baker can't do anymore damage, she knocks down the load-bearing pillar of her entire series:
She makes the immortals completely inhuman.
The incredible appeal of these books was their humanist irony: immortal beings, forcibly separated in almost every way from the human race, who nevertheless persist in being wonderfully, tragically human. Mendoza railing against their foolishness and misguided passions, only to fall prey to her own. Joseph dealing with the loss of his humanity by plunging himself into human foibles, dirtying his own hands over and over if it meant being able to save people when he could. Lewis trying to write. Juan Bautista saving the raven. Porfirio saving his family. Imarte mourning Babylon forever. Even Houbert, keeping the madness of eternity at bay through Gatsby-esque leisure palaces. There was no way for us, as readers, to relate to them -- except for the undeniably relatable, and human, twin drives of loss and striving. It made everything they went through, as fantastic as it got, feel real.
Not anymore.
I'm giving away all my Company books after tLotWtC. It might not salvage future re-reads of my favorites, knowing what's to come, but I have to make the effort. I love too much about what these books were to give up on them entirely.
But it's going to be hard.
I'll say it again so you can appreciate, after context, how much I mean it: I wish I had never read this book.
EDIT, October 2023:
A deeply weird twist has emerged in Baker's personal story, much like the ones in her later books. One of Kage Baker's sisters has revealed she was a hugely collaborative force not just, she insists, during those last years of Baker's life when her health and writing was impacted by cancer, but throughout her life. This same insistence got her double billing on the posthumously-published Nell Gwynne's Land and Seas and a story in Asimov, as well as the opportunity to publish essays on Kage Baker in a multitude of venues.
And yet here comes the punchline: she's not one of Baker's biological sisters but a childhood friend, lifelong companion, and of course her caretaker later in life. Her online blog is entirely comprised of talking about Kage Baker to a still-devoted fanbase. She's open about the idea that the blog, maintained steadily with Baker anecdotes in the 13 years since Baker's death, was intended to introduce people to the idea that she was also a capable writer, with possibly (as mentioned in interviews) original fiction in the works. Many of those blog anecdotes and interviews also emphasize how much of Baker's writing was actually "collaborative effort" and a "shared world." The blog is the only place you can still go to for Kage Baker info, by the way, as the main website is dismantled.
Interesting, since this woman also cites Mendoza as her least favorite character in an interview, one where she still called herself Baker's sister. (And she would use the same identity on Tor.com in a retrospect on Baker's books, even after, according to her, a spouse of one of Baker's blood siblings started informing review sites of the truth and objecting to her use of the term.) She also talked about how her favorite book in the series is Machine's Child, aka, the one where Mendoza is all but written out, made into a malleable child-puppet, while Edward becomes the de-facto protagonist. It's also interesting to note this woman is open about how she's always, personally, longed for children. Meanwhile Kage Baker always seemed, to me, almost proudly single and childless -- to the point where the emphasis on procreation in the later Company books, and the idea that wanting children was innate and having them solved a multitude of problems, really shocked me.
Interesting. Interesting.
Well. For reasons of my own, which of course are of no interest to anyone else, I've decided to stop holding the last two Company novels against Baker. I've decided those earlier books, full of (ultimately) dropped plotlines and (now-)meaningless foreshadowing, were actually intended to go somewhere that wasn't a conclusion full of self-contradicting world building, or sidelining of previous central characters. What prevented the original intentions of those early books resulting in a more cohesive conclusion, I'll never know.
Well, I'm properly gutted.
I have loved this series since it first debuted. I was a young teenager, and a friend of mine recommended The Garden of Iden -- I very nearly didn't give back her borrowed copy, I was so in love. It was funny; it was nerdy. It was history; it was scifi. It was a revelation, and so were its characters.
Then came Sky Coyote, Mendoza in Hollywood, and The Graveyard Game. Years later I still have vivid memories of missed sleep and no regrets, my heart twisting with each new reveal in this tricky, complex tale.
Then Black Projects, White Knights and The Life of the World to Come. Both fine and dandy, I thought, but a bit abbreviated -- like they were the warm-up for something, filling in the blanks to really send the finale home. I read The Machine's Child -- I purchased that sucker in hardcover, and there is truly no greater sign of my devotion -- and a pit opened up in my stomach. A pit of uncertainty and, for the very first time, doubt in Baker's vision.
I put off The Sons of Heaven. It came out and I purchased my copy, but I held off. I told myself I wasn't ready for the story of the Company to end, that it was the usual reluctance of any reader to leave a world she truly loves. A friend of mine wrote a spoiler-free review where she mentioned her own disappointment, and I thought, well, The Sons of Heaven will keep.
That was over ten years ago, and this year I told myself to just bite the bullet. I've grown, I told myself, I'm a more critical reader now and it won't actually hurt me to read a bad book be a beloved author, the way it would have when I was young. Forewarned is forearmed, right? I was going in with basement-level expectations.
Reader, it was worse than I could have ever imagined.
This book is a goddamned horrorshow. There's a line in the last third, where Baker asks the reader "what were you expecting," a "testosterone-laden" display of violence? But although she doesn't succumb to a shoot-em-up, "testosterone" pervades this book in the sense of utter and unquestioned patriarchal values, Baker's own casual misogyny roaring to life with teeth and fangs. I can't be specific without going into spoilers, but if you want a general warning: think of every truly toxic trope of, say, '80s-era romance novels. The really gross ones. You know exactly what I mean: the shit that gives that genre a bad name, even when it's clearly indulgent fantasy with no pretense to edification.
They're ALL in this book, and delivered with awful, self-important seriousness.
Besides that, it's as if Baker took everything wonderful about the first four books and chucked it out the window. Do you care at all about Lewis, Mendoza, or Joseph, aka the primary cast of the initial novels? Then you are shit out of luck, my friend, they barely feature. Joseph is passive and peripheral. Mendoza is a walking . Lewis is only there to move someone else's plot forward. I've always wondered why so many of the later books in this series were just short stories about minor characters -- turns out those are the only characters to actually DO anything in the finale, and to follow the action and reveals you had better have read every single anthology. Oh, and be prepared for an entire new cast of creatures to take center stage as well.
Or maybe you're interested regardless, to see the conclusion of Mendoza's romance with Project Adonai? Fucking brace yourself.
If that stomach-churning content doesn't exhaust you, you're still in for a disappointing read. Or at least I was. Baker feels off the leash in this book, and her usual writing peccadilloes, totally unrestrained, began to tire fast: blatant Anglophilia, female characters whose only role is to care about or look after the men who actually do shit, and being a little too much in love with the "cleverness" of her characters to the point where everyone's dialogue began to sound the same. The deus ex machina elements from earlier books is carried over, with even more added, just in a different direction -- instead of the device to get the characters out of trouble, this one is inserted specifically to get them into it.
It all reads hollow, terribly hollow. And just when you think Baker can't do anymore damage, she knocks down the load-bearing pillar of her entire series:
She makes the immortals completely inhuman.
The incredible appeal of these books was their humanist irony: immortal beings, forcibly separated in almost every way from the human race, who nevertheless persist in being wonderfully, tragically human. Mendoza railing against their foolishness and misguided passions, only to fall prey to her own. Joseph dealing with the loss of his humanity by plunging himself into human foibles, dirtying his own hands over and over if it meant being able to save people when he could. Lewis trying to write. Juan Bautista saving the raven. Porfirio saving his family. Imarte mourning Babylon forever. Even Houbert, keeping the madness of eternity at bay through Gatsby-esque leisure palaces. There was no way for us, as readers, to relate to them -- except for the undeniably relatable, and human, twin drives of loss and striving. It made everything they went through, as fantastic as it got, feel real.
Not anymore.
I'm giving away all my Company books after tLotWtC. It might not salvage future re-reads of my favorites, knowing what's to come, but I have to make the effort. I love too much about what these books were to give up on them entirely.
But it's going to be hard.
I'll say it again so you can appreciate, after context, how much I mean it: I wish I had never read this book.
EDIT, October 2023:
A deeply weird twist has emerged in Baker's personal story, much like the ones in her later books. One of Kage Baker's sisters has revealed she was a hugely collaborative force not just, she insists, during those last years of Baker's life when her health and writing was impacted by cancer, but throughout her life. This same insistence got her double billing on the posthumously-published Nell Gwynne's Land and Seas and a story in Asimov, as well as the opportunity to publish essays on Kage Baker in a multitude of venues.
And yet here comes the punchline: she's not one of Baker's biological sisters but a childhood friend, lifelong companion, and of course her caretaker later in life. Her online blog is entirely comprised of talking about Kage Baker to a still-devoted fanbase. She's open about the idea that the blog, maintained steadily with Baker anecdotes in the 13 years since Baker's death, was intended to introduce people to the idea that she was also a capable writer, with possibly (as mentioned in interviews) original fiction in the works. Many of those blog anecdotes and interviews also emphasize how much of Baker's writing was actually "collaborative effort" and a "shared world." The blog is the only place you can still go to for Kage Baker info, by the way, as the main website is dismantled.
Interesting, since this woman also cites Mendoza as her least favorite character in an interview, one where she still called herself Baker's sister. (And she would use the same identity on Tor.com in a retrospect on Baker's books, even after, according to her, a spouse of one of Baker's blood siblings started informing review sites of the truth and objecting to her use of the term.) She also talked about how her favorite book in the series is Machine's Child, aka, the one where Mendoza is all but written out, made into a malleable child-puppet, while Edward becomes the de-facto protagonist. It's also interesting to note this woman is open about how she's always, personally, longed for children. Meanwhile Kage Baker always seemed, to me, almost proudly single and childless -- to the point where the emphasis on procreation in the later Company books, and the idea that wanting children was innate and having them solved a multitude of problems, really shocked me.
Interesting. Interesting.
Well. For reasons of my own, which of course are of no interest to anyone else, I've decided to stop holding the last two Company novels against Baker. I've decided those earlier books, full of (ultimately) dropped plotlines and (now-)meaningless foreshadowing, were actually intended to go somewhere that wasn't a conclusion full of self-contradicting world building, or sidelining of previous central characters. What prevented the original intentions of those early books resulting in a more cohesive conclusion, I'll never know.
April 23, 2020
A frustrating end to an otherwise enjoyable series.
Right off the bat: Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax can eff right off with his sick, manipulative, controlling bull crap, which he is somehow never made to account for. Kage Baker seems to like him, and I can’t fathom why. I’d like to time-travel back to 2007 or 2006, shake her, and ask who hurt her. Honestly.
It is explicitly stated in the narrative that Edward physically AND mentally rapes Mendoza, and she’s... fine with it? It’s just...shrugged off? Wt-ever loving-f? It destroyed the rest of the story for me that Edward gets no humbling, no retribution of any kind. I kept hoping the Captain would at least have something up his virtual sleeve. He’s all but moved heaven and earth for Alec before, but now it’s just “Ah, he’s trapped Alec’s consciousness in a horrific mental prison, but oh well I’ll just go along with what Edward wants”???
I can see how Baker’s goal was to have Mendoza end up with all three of her lovers, restored to separate bodies, and 2/3 of the way through the previous book, that ending would have been fine with me. But this was NOT the way to do it. Edward does not deserve an ounce of happiness after what he did and continues to do throughout the novel.
The narrative also seems to want us to believe he becomes a good father, but it’s not something we see demonstrated. It’s all a sick game of control for Edward, pretending he has the authority to “parent” Nicholas and Alec’s fully adult minds. He’s more of a Captain von Trapp at the BEGINNING of The Sound of Music, with his system of demerits. Then his stupid book on parenting is handed out to other immortals, as if anyone should ever copy his techniques? We were supposed to think he was a good dad when he spent years happily oppressing his “sons” (who, again, had the fully adult minds of his ROMANTIC RIVALS implanted into EMBRYOS, and the psychic trauma of that is barely acknowledged)?
Elsewhere in the series Baker seems to understand the evils of colonialism, but here we hear alllll about how Edward thinks Victorian (colonialist!!!!!! racist!!!!!!) England is the pinnacle of civilization and mocks the other characters for expressing different opinions, or even having different tastes. We hear repeatedly that Edward Is Always Right, and he narrative never substantively contradicts him. What the hell?
Mendoza is suddenly passive, letting Edward do whatever he wants and apparently never objecting to his dated and sexist views of women and motherhood. Not to mention the Captain joining in violating her bodily autonomy by just... desterilizing her and not telling her until later. Sure, she never had a choice in being sterilized in the first place, but it’s HER BODY. Or should be. Edward certainly seems to think her body belongs to him, since he presents pregnancy to her as a fait accompli AND he just... casually removes her Crome’s radiation? Cool, so the plot device that set Mendoza apart from other immortals was just there to be taken and used by a man? What the hell?
Edward also takes the opportunity to tell Mendoza how puny her mind is compared to his. Which she’s also somehow fine with because he’s good at sex or whatever. HOW DID WE GET HERE? Nicholas has his flaws in the first book, but at least he respected Mendoza as an intellectual equal. Remember the the philosophical sparring matches that brought them together? And somehow Murderer McRapist Douchebag who can’t stop patronizing her for a single minute is her endgame instead?
The other Company stuff was more or less fine, though I still don’t know what William Randolph Hearst had to do with anything. And I’d have liked more Kalugin. The resolution worked for me— it was literally a deus ex machina, but I thought it worked here.
Edward’s unchecked douchebaggery comes close to ruining the series for me, though. And there’s so much that I otherwise enjoyed! The dinner party scene and Victor’s ultimate fate were incredible. Just...what the hell happened?
I had to append my own ending to my copy of the book to set my mind at ease. It goes like this:
“Then Edward died for real, and no one was sorry. The End. P. S. — his death was both extremely painful and somehow humiliating.”
Right off the bat: Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax can eff right off with his sick, manipulative, controlling bull crap, which he is somehow never made to account for. Kage Baker seems to like him, and I can’t fathom why. I’d like to time-travel back to 2007 or 2006, shake her, and ask who hurt her. Honestly.
It is explicitly stated in the narrative that Edward physically AND mentally rapes Mendoza, and she’s... fine with it? It’s just...shrugged off? Wt-ever loving-f? It destroyed the rest of the story for me that Edward gets no humbling, no retribution of any kind. I kept hoping the Captain would at least have something up his virtual sleeve. He’s all but moved heaven and earth for Alec before, but now it’s just “Ah, he’s trapped Alec’s consciousness in a horrific mental prison, but oh well I’ll just go along with what Edward wants”???
I can see how Baker’s goal was to have Mendoza end up with all three of her lovers, restored to separate bodies, and 2/3 of the way through the previous book, that ending would have been fine with me. But this was NOT the way to do it. Edward does not deserve an ounce of happiness after what he did and continues to do throughout the novel.
The narrative also seems to want us to believe he becomes a good father, but it’s not something we see demonstrated. It’s all a sick game of control for Edward, pretending he has the authority to “parent” Nicholas and Alec’s fully adult minds. He’s more of a Captain von Trapp at the BEGINNING of The Sound of Music, with his system of demerits. Then his stupid book on parenting is handed out to other immortals, as if anyone should ever copy his techniques? We were supposed to think he was a good dad when he spent years happily oppressing his “sons” (who, again, had the fully adult minds of his ROMANTIC RIVALS implanted into EMBRYOS, and the psychic trauma of that is barely acknowledged)?
Elsewhere in the series Baker seems to understand the evils of colonialism, but here we hear alllll about how Edward thinks Victorian (colonialist!!!!!! racist!!!!!!) England is the pinnacle of civilization and mocks the other characters for expressing different opinions, or even having different tastes. We hear repeatedly that Edward Is Always Right, and he narrative never substantively contradicts him. What the hell?
Mendoza is suddenly passive, letting Edward do whatever he wants and apparently never objecting to his dated and sexist views of women and motherhood. Not to mention the Captain joining in violating her bodily autonomy by just... desterilizing her and not telling her until later. Sure, she never had a choice in being sterilized in the first place, but it’s HER BODY. Or should be. Edward certainly seems to think her body belongs to him, since he presents pregnancy to her as a fait accompli AND he just... casually removes her Crome’s radiation? Cool, so the plot device that set Mendoza apart from other immortals was just there to be taken and used by a man? What the hell?
Edward also takes the opportunity to tell Mendoza how puny her mind is compared to his. Which she’s also somehow fine with because he’s good at sex or whatever. HOW DID WE GET HERE? Nicholas has his flaws in the first book, but at least he respected Mendoza as an intellectual equal. Remember the the philosophical sparring matches that brought them together? And somehow Murderer McRapist Douchebag who can’t stop patronizing her for a single minute is her endgame instead?
The other Company stuff was more or less fine, though I still don’t know what William Randolph Hearst had to do with anything. And I’d have liked more Kalugin. The resolution worked for me— it was literally a deus ex machina, but I thought it worked here.
Edward’s unchecked douchebaggery comes close to ruining the series for me, though. And there’s so much that I otherwise enjoyed! The dinner party scene and Victor’s ultimate fate were incredible. Just...what the hell happened?
I had to append my own ending to my copy of the book to set my mind at ease. It goes like this:
“Then Edward died for real, and no one was sorry. The End. P. S. — his death was both extremely painful and somehow humiliating.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 26, 2009
The Sons of Heaven is a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to Kage Baker's series about The Company, a corporation that has modified young children to grow up into immortals. These immortals spend the centuries collection precious works of art, literature, and genetic material. In The Sons of Heaven, linear time is quickly approaching July 9, 2355. It's on this date that the temporal concordance, the record of all history, ends. Nobody knows why there aren't any entries in the temporal concordance after July 9, 2355, but they're about to find out.
This book is extremely well-paced and ties together the plot threads of the previous novels quite well. It had quite a few surprises and some great twists and turns. It's not the best book in the series. That would be a toss up between The Life of the World to Come or The Machine's Child.
There's really not much more I can say without giving away the whole thing.
This book is extremely well-paced and ties together the plot threads of the previous novels quite well. It had quite a few surprises and some great twists and turns. It's not the best book in the series. That would be a toss up between The Life of the World to Come or The Machine's Child.
There's really not much more I can say without giving away the whole thing.
January 18, 2009
I don't really feel this is the ending the series deserved. Edward is a pompous ass and easily my least favorite character in the series, so the events in this installment really frustrated me (as well as really squicking me out with the incest stuff). The loose ends do pretty much get tied up, and I adore Lewis, but on the whole, I kind of want a do-over.
February 27, 2008
having spent the last month of my life reading this series in every moment i had, what will i do now?? at least i saved one last short story collection.
this closing volume, while interesting in the way that everything taking place in this universe tends to be, bothered me in too many ways to be a favorite. specifically, the fact that Edward totally fucked over Nicholas and Alec, but all Mendoza did was go "oh well what a bastard but oooh i am so in love let's fuck while time traveling" and that was that. she could have had a LITTLE more conflict about it, but i guess it didn't really matter since she loved all of them the same and it didn't matter which of them was dominant, which also kind of bothered me.
the parts that weren't about Mendoza were decent enough, and i was even satisfied with the ending. and there were bits involving the mortals who think they're running Dr. Zeus that made me snicker, such as when one of them confused a jack-in-the-box with Schroedinger's Cat. Kage Baker is, if nothing else, a very funny writer.
overall and in general, I loved this entire series. with so many books, I really felt embroiled in the world Baker created, and was continually impressed by all the different weird little bits and pieces she brought in.
this closing volume, while interesting in the way that everything taking place in this universe tends to be, bothered me in too many ways to be a favorite. specifically, the fact that Edward totally fucked over Nicholas and Alec, but all Mendoza did was go "oh well what a bastard but oooh i am so in love let's fuck while time traveling" and that was that. she could have had a LITTLE more conflict about it, but i guess it didn't really matter since she loved all of them the same and it didn't matter which of them was dominant, which also kind of bothered me.
the parts that weren't about Mendoza were decent enough, and i was even satisfied with the ending. and there were bits involving the mortals who think they're running Dr. Zeus that made me snicker, such as when one of them confused a jack-in-the-box with Schroedinger's Cat. Kage Baker is, if nothing else, a very funny writer.
overall and in general, I loved this entire series. with so many books, I really felt embroiled in the world Baker created, and was continually impressed by all the different weird little bits and pieces she brought in.
December 28, 2008
The long-awaited finale to Baker's Company books is entertaining in parts but she has a tendency to focus on the characters I like the least. I've never really been a fan of the Mendoza character and she is especially annoying here. In past books she at least had some spirit and took some initiative. Here she's nothing but a passive reactor to the patronizing and manipulative Edward.
As the story progressed it felt like a huge crescendo was building, with many factions about to converge. Instead, potentially interesting storylines were wrapped up too neatly and the whole thing ended in a way that didn't make much sense. Disappointing.
As the story progressed it felt like a huge crescendo was building, with many factions about to converge. Instead, potentially interesting storylines were wrapped up too neatly and the whole thing ended in a way that didn't make much sense. Disappointing.
September 4, 2007
It hurts me to say it, but I was disappointed with this book. Mendoza was an amazing character, but she had less and less to do as the series progressed, and in this final book, Baker broke my heart over her. Disillusionment is so painful.
October 3, 2022
No real interest in trying again on this late Company novel. Surprisingly dull. I think she was sick by then.
May 15, 2018
Wow! I could not imagine how Kage Baker was going to wrap up all the diverse storylines and bring this series to anything resembling a satisfying conclusion, but she did and then some! I can’t say much more for fear of spoilers, but what seemed like an unholy mess filled with dead ends at the conclusion of The Machine's Child turns out to be quite neatly resolved. Aahhhh, the payoff is worth the wait.
March 8, 2010
Whew!
I was worried there after The Machine's Child. I had begun to doubt that Baker had it in her to bring all of her plot strands together in any satisfying way, and I had half convinced myself that she had grown fed up with her characters and was going to toss them out with the rest of the trash. I was even more worried that I was going to agree with that decision -- I certainly didn't like anyone much at the end of the last novel!
But this is the author that somehow turned every trope of heroic fantasy on its head in The House of the Stag to write a tale about a man destined to change the world who wanted nothing more than to be left alone to live and be happy. And The Sons of Heaven is very much in that vein. There are plots within plots within plots within plots centering around 2355, each plot encompassing the ones beneath it, and at least four other rogue strands that no one knows about; every character introduced in the series is brought back and dealt with in some fashion; and yes, the ending is just the tiniest bit too pat, too deus ex machina to feel completely right. But so much else is exactly right about this book -- Mendoza's family life, the Preservers' response to the Silence, the A.I.s. Baker answers questions I was worried she wasn't going to answer (the absurd linearity of Company time travel, for one) and questions I hadn't even bothered posing (the prevalence of idiot-savants in the future).
There was even some leavening of heartbreak (or at least melancholy), though it could have used a little more to make the ending feel deserved. Lewis and Princess Tiara under the hill; Ancilla back in 500,000 B.C.E.; Victor -- those moments made the blood and sweat and tears real, even if they were few and far between (and one of them, at least, got wrapped up too neatly too). I still think Baker wasted Joseph and Budu, but I loved the line of causality that tied Budu to Aegeus and Labienus -- a little selective amnesia is good for the soul. So all in all, while this series is far from perfect, it is one to be recommended -- quirky, irreverent, decidedly optimistic overall, and best of all warm and funny and wise. Ms. Baker will be sadly missed, and I am humbly grateful that she completed this series (and wrote much else) before her untimely death.
I was worried there after The Machine's Child. I had begun to doubt that Baker had it in her to bring all of her plot strands together in any satisfying way, and I had half convinced myself that she had grown fed up with her characters and was going to toss them out with the rest of the trash. I was even more worried that I was going to agree with that decision -- I certainly didn't like anyone much at the end of the last novel!
But this is the author that somehow turned every trope of heroic fantasy on its head in The House of the Stag to write a tale about a man destined to change the world who wanted nothing more than to be left alone to live and be happy. And The Sons of Heaven is very much in that vein. There are plots within plots within plots within plots centering around 2355, each plot encompassing the ones beneath it, and at least four other rogue strands that no one knows about; every character introduced in the series is brought back and dealt with in some fashion; and yes, the ending is just the tiniest bit too pat, too deus ex machina to feel completely right. But so much else is exactly right about this book -- Mendoza's family life, the Preservers' response to the Silence, the A.I.s. Baker answers questions I was worried she wasn't going to answer (the absurd linearity of Company time travel, for one) and questions I hadn't even bothered posing (the prevalence of idiot-savants in the future).
There was even some leavening of heartbreak (or at least melancholy), though it could have used a little more to make the ending feel deserved. Lewis and Princess Tiara under the hill; Ancilla back in 500,000 B.C.E.; Victor -- those moments made the blood and sweat and tears real, even if they were few and far between (and one of them, at least, got wrapped up too neatly too). I still think Baker wasted Joseph and Budu, but I loved the line of causality that tied Budu to Aegeus and Labienus -- a little selective amnesia is good for the soul. So all in all, while this series is far from perfect, it is one to be recommended -- quirky, irreverent, decidedly optimistic overall, and best of all warm and funny and wise. Ms. Baker will be sadly missed, and I am humbly grateful that she completed this series (and wrote much else) before her untimely death.
March 16, 2021
I should have listened to the many reviewers who pointed out that this series reaches its pinnacle in the fourth book, The Graveyard Game, and then it's all tragically downhill from there.
(I'd make an exception for The Children of the Company, which unexpectedly turned out to be one of my favorites in the series; it's the book that gives us our first glimpse behind the Company curtain, and also introduces my favorite operative, the unflappable Facilitator Van Drouten. Damn it all, why couldn't we have had more of her, and less of Edward Bell-Fairfax, that dumpster fire personified?...)
I'm not at all convinced that the shiny, happy ending we get in this volume justifies Edward's (and, frankly, Kage Baker's) treatment of the Botanist Mendoza. Her storyline is appalling, and if I could get in one of Dr. Zeus' shuttles and go back in time to a point before Edward did... that... to her, I would. Gladly.
(I'd make an exception for The Children of the Company, which unexpectedly turned out to be one of my favorites in the series; it's the book that gives us our first glimpse behind the Company curtain, and also introduces my favorite operative, the unflappable Facilitator Van Drouten. Damn it all, why couldn't we have had more of her, and less of Edward Bell-Fairfax, that dumpster fire personified?...)
I'm not at all convinced that the shiny, happy ending we get in this volume justifies Edward's (and, frankly, Kage Baker's) treatment of the Botanist Mendoza. Her storyline is appalling, and if I could get in one of Dr. Zeus' shuttles and go back in time to a point before Edward did... that... to her, I would. Gladly.
August 26, 2007
The Sons of Heaven is the final installment of Baker's long-running The Company series. The mystery is finally solved - what does happen on July 9th, 2355? Baker follows at least 6 separate plot lines, but this makes the book suspenseful rather than confusing. I feel that Baker introduced some events in the book without adequate prior set-up. The plotting as a whole has been so well-crafted from the beginning that I wish she didn't have to write in some events just to get the plot to move along in the right direction. That said, Baker does an admirable job of writing a satisfying finale to the series.
August 5, 2019
The End at last
I finally finished the company novels. It has taken me five years to get through all of them. I have to say this was one of my least favorite books of the series. There are so many loose ends that needed to be tied up and plot lines that needed to be resolved as well as characters that needed to have a resolution to their timeline. This made the book slightly confusing in a little bit scattershot. I still have to say that Kage Baker is one of my favorite authors, however I often felt like I was on a merry-go-round while reading this novel. Someone else mentioned the deus ex Machina that is used to resolved all of the outstanding issues. I agree, It reminds me a lot of Robert A Heinlein’s last novels in which there was a big party at the end where in all of the characters appeared. Still an enjoyable, fun read and head and shoulders above most of the current Science Fiction.
I finally finished the company novels. It has taken me five years to get through all of them. I have to say this was one of my least favorite books of the series. There are so many loose ends that needed to be tied up and plot lines that needed to be resolved as well as characters that needed to have a resolution to their timeline. This made the book slightly confusing in a little bit scattershot. I still have to say that Kage Baker is one of my favorite authors, however I often felt like I was on a merry-go-round while reading this novel. Someone else mentioned the deus ex Machina that is used to resolved all of the outstanding issues. I agree, It reminds me a lot of Robert A Heinlein’s last novels in which there was a big party at the end where in all of the characters appeared. Still an enjoyable, fun read and head and shoulders above most of the current Science Fiction.
May 1, 2022
Words cannot really describe my disappointment in this book.
The Company series is a time travel series where Dr. Zeus Inc goes back in time and takes people from different time periods and turns them into immortal cyborgs.
I will say I liked the parts with Suleyman/Latif/Sarai, Budu/Hearst/Joseph and bits and Lewis, whenever he gets a chance to shine. I wish I could say more in favor of this book, it fell short on every conceivable level.
The ending was just terrible. They all get superpowers and remain a secret cabal of immortals that now have Q like powers? Yeah, that doesn't really cut it for me. It's too easy. The ending was so bad I want to make the entire books into a series just so I can rewrite the ending.
The last two books would have been much better if Baker had brought back her older characters that she never got back to. I really liked Van Drouten as a character and she only gets one brief phone call scene. Imarte never comes back and she was incredible. Same for Oscar and Einar. Baker dropped the ball on so many things, but mainly the text degrades starting in Machines Child and just does not get better. There is a disturbing pattern of Edward's dominance bordering on abusive that Mendoza perpetually forgives, and there is something sickening in that. I don't really fully get that Edward has really changed much by the end. He never says, hey sorry for being an arrogant dickhead or anything. I didn't love that Christianity just dies out, either. I thought that was a shitty ending for Nicholas, who seems to have godlike powers himself now but doesn't go back in time to find out if Jesus was real or not. Maybe Baker just gave up on his whole plotline of existential crisis of faith and doubting the existence of God. That was a pretty major thing for him to go through and there seems to be no resolve whatsoever for him.
Alec fares a little better. He grows up in his own way more than any other character so I was at least satisfied with his story arc. The Captain is the dullest character and I wish he would just stop with the pirate talk by book 7. Just have him talk normally, it would be a sign his character gets true sentience if he isn't able to escape his initial programming.
All of the villains are just so cartoonishly stupid. Labienus and Aegeus actually have the best scene in this book, by FAR, where both of their mutual sides who hate each other get together for a really fancy dinner party for The Silence, which is the last known use of time travel. All of the series has been a question of what happens during The Silence where time communication ceases. The best scene involves all of the most unlikeable characters plus some new people we don't know, and they all have their bodies fall apart and rapidly deteriorate into piles of mush. Thank Victor for that, his revenge for the Plague Club creating all of humanity's worst diseases. These are the villains who made every known plague and experimented on humans, did really horrible torture on other immortals...all those people just melt in a Raiders of the Lost Ark level of death scene. They can all be reconstituted later, but we don't see that at all. We have no idea what happens to them, if they actually are brought back or if they are also skulls. I don't know.
So Aegeus and Labienus plotted against every other immortal to kill them permanently, which was pretty badass of him, but everyone found out and then declared war when they discovered what he did. So his cabal melts to death, but it's only temporary. But what about the remaining cabal when they are reconstituted with the cyberbrains? Wouldn't there be friction between those cabals that wanted to kill other immortals and each other? They wanted to kill everyone else. They also plotted against each other and both lose in the end, and only Labienus and Aegeus are regulated to just mere skulls, never to be reborn again. A better ending is someone steals their skulls so they get to be out there, lurking.
All of the Company characters are very flat. The 3 nerds from the Adonai project are there but they're all just annoying. No real development and they can't even serve as comedic support. We never really got to know Lopez as a character so when he interacts with the Company board it just seems like who gives a crap? We have no idea what his past has been like so it's hard to empathize with his plight. The board members are just way too stupid for me to believe. Their total ineptitude just seems unlikely. The immortals truly do seem to be the only real non Idiocracy humans left in the future world, with most people reverting to an almost childlike fragility resembling the Eloi from the Time Machine. This was probably a purposeful move on Baker's part, with shades of other dystopias creeping in. The overprotective and hypersensitive future that portrays monitors preventing people from hugging without a license and locks people away for the slightest infractions of anger gets to just keep chugging on. Ratlin and Quean Barbie, who are what is left of another species of humans mistaken for Gray Aliens, are the only non autistic members of their species, which can construct mathematical wonders but not be able to communicate linguistically. So they are hybrids and they resemble a cross between humans and Gray aliens. Ratlin is like some kind of Dickensian villain saying old timey phrases and cackling a lot. Quean Barbie is in charge of her autistic gray alien warren, they all live like hobbits or mole people, only filthier. So the two of them become Team Rocket and just fly off screaming at each other in their UFO as it careens across the horizon as they're about to kill each other. Goodbye, villains who are both cartoonish and one dimensional! Okay. That's...remarkably disappointing but okay.
The immortals decide to listen to Mendoza and her 3 Time Stooges. The governments agree to keep everything secret when the data about their hidden tax evasion is made evident. As an ending, just what in the world was she thinking? So that's the ending. Okay. No.
I just don't accept that this is the ending. Tiara winds up with Hearst? Yeah, sure okay but...can you show me how her character changed after she acclimated to the outside world, outside of getting to go shopping? You built this character up throughout this whole book over way more interesting characters and she doesn't even merit a scene where she's reacting to her new world? Ugh.
Joseph is just reduced to a comedic foil near the end. There was no tenderness really showcased between him and Mendoza to show their reconciliation. No Shakespearean moment of revelation and then forgiveness. That would have been the way to go with that plotline arc. Joseph and Mendoza barely talk to each other at the end at all.
Dr. Zeus the program came and went rather quickly. He never develops as a character, though. He just pops into existence and Nicholas deletes him or some shit. Uh. Zeus should have interacted more with characters from throughout the series, showing that he has developed rapport with them, possibly especially with Labienus and Aegeus, who he wants to support alongside the 3 Time Stooges. This is what I'm calling them, it just seems appropriate. The character's final confrontation with Nicholas is visually pretty fluff. No real substance. He represented the "heart" of the Company and we got really creepy references to him throughout the books, and yet he never materializes as a real character, just a creepy voice giving orders now and then. There was no deep characterization here and it seems very cheap.
And then they all become their own gods and fuck off. Or something. Lewis doesn't wind up in love with anyone, he winds up working for Edward, which is a very unsatisfying ending to me. Honestly, it would have made more sense for Mendoza to ditch all three Adonai clones and just choose Lewis instead. It would have made such a better ending. If you think about how this book ends with Mendoza dancing with all three of her 3 Time Stooges as they phase in and out of reality as they dance with her, taking turns with the lead. Okay. Barf. Sorry. I just...I can't with this. This is too much. The whole bad romantic arc....
Which by the way, involves her giving birth to two of her lovers, Nicholas and Alec, raising them as children, and Edward takes over as her husband, raising his two clones as his sons. Okay. I need to just...none of this needed to be done. But that's what she went with. Why not, if you must go with this as an idea, have them just whip up an artificial womb type device? They can do anything else in this freaking deux ex machina of a novel. It's so creepy. They did an American Dad episode like this where Haley has to give birth to Jeff after he dies. I can't believe there are two plotlines involving that situation on the same planet. But there you have it. Nicholas seems to just want to party with Mendoza once he hits 17 Again, and I guess since that's how she's supposed to look agewise, but...it's still gross that she becomes his mother and then his lover again. Ew. Same for Alec. Ew. Also I guess Mendoza never aged up again from 14 when she was brought back to life after she was taken apart. But I just refused to picture that ever. I decided that in Machine's Child to ignore it altogether and picture her at 18 or mid 20s.
Here's why Lewis and Mendoza would be a better ending. She basically becomes mother to Nicholas and Alec and at the end, what they SHOULD do is heal as individuals and go on with their lives without her, the way you do when you leave home, leave your parental figure. She sacrifices everything for them throughout the course of the books, time and again. It would make far more sense for her to tell them that they could never have the same kind of relationship again, because it had just become something much different.
Edward as a character doesn't ever strike me as worthy of anyone's love. He's the most pompous, arrogant, belligerent, uncompromising cunt of a man I've read about since Malta's father from the Liveship Traders series. I don't care for him. I don't care about him. He annoys me. His attempts to better his brothers by raising them didn't ever seem to go well. He doesn't really grow into the role of a father, ever. He just becomes a strict disciplinarian. It doesn't really gel well with me that he slides on by in all this without really evolving either. He is never right about anything that I can see, and Mendoza just goes along with giving all her power over to him, even when he destroys her Crome's radiation without her permission. To take it for himself and his brothers. Gross.
They show up at the end, declare themselves to be superpowered, offer superpowers to all the other immortals in exchange for not murdering all the Company humans. So no one in the Company goes to jail for like, torture or anything. Even though they ordered torture facilities. And made thousands of people slaves for millennia. That's...all okay. They all take plea deals to go do science or retire quietly. So the governments get a whole bunch of art, treasure, antiques, etc. They get museums for all that. Okay. Great. I guess.
Only, no one goes to jail for slavery or torture or murder. There's that.
Alec just decides to Clark Kent it along with his fellow immortals, whose lives will be forever secret in spite of all the thousands of years they worked to preserve genetic diversity, biodiversity, every artifact humanity made worth saving that would have been lost without them...no recognition for all of that. And the Enforcers become security guards and mercenaries for governments with superviolent criminals. Okay. That's...okay.
Only...it would have been way better if the truth came out about immortals being real, and give them the prestige they deserve after millennia of preserving everything about humanity's past. No, all they get is the ability to make babies, because making babies is important for immortals. Not, you know, becoming the natural leaders of a world that desperately needs their guidance. No, they're just going to let humans do whatever and they'll just watch.
One could argue that keeping it a secret is the most expected ending. Even if you still go with that idea and their lives have to be a secret, can it at least be more interesting? Great, Latif got together with his immortal mother who raised him and had a baby with her. Um. Gross. That's gross. I'm detecting a pattern of incestual relationships in this book. The Oedipal comments seal the deal on that and the book's obvious approval of this penchant for mother son incest is slightly nauseating.
I always pictured Hearst and Lewis getting together since they met before, and hitting it off, becoming partners in crime together. Two tycoons living side by side, best of buds. And I would have loved to see him paired with Mendoza at the end because he's just more deserving. He's the underdog. He's the survivor. He's the one that loved her for who she truly was, not wanting to change her into the perfect mate the way Edward does. Alec was always too emotionally needy and Nicholas is a spiritual wreck. It would be better for Mendoza to start her new life over with someone new and walk away from the quite frankly, way too complicated and freaky deaky shit she wound up just embracing.
Or if not that, bring Marlene Dietrich back, since she and Lewis spent a night together in the 30s. Maybe unfreeze her from time and replace her with an android or something. Make her immortal and pair her with Lewis so Lewis has a happy ending. Or pair Lewis with Hearst. Hell, pair Lewis with anyone! Anything would be better than this ending where he and Joseph just fawn over Mendoza's new 3 Time Stooges family.
Just...no. They all deserved more dignity than this. They all get magic superpowers that the author pulled out of her ass. They realize "matter and time are perception". So then they become Q. She doesn't even really explain how Crome's radiation could transfer from consciousness to consciousness, as it is described in previous books as being responsible for psychic abilities. Everything is just lovey dovey on the utopia island beyond time with Mendoza and the 3 Time Stooges. Again, barf.
And seriously, I loved Imarte, Oscar and Einar as characters and it's just disappointing they all disappeared without endings. And Victor's ending sucked. He just falls asleep forever. Okay. A way better ending would be for him to discuss the son he made immortal in San Francisco and tell that story. We never found out about that kid he made immortal! We didn't get to see Nan and Kalugin reunite. What a great scene that would have been. We just don't get enough of that. Really show us that ending between those two characters.
A much, much better ending would involve the immortals coming together to stop the Gray alien humans (homo umbratillis) from taking revenge against humans. The poison chocolate plotline was just so stupid. These are the genius beings with super technology powers? It seems like they forgot all about how to make things without the hybrids making them do things. Their entire species seems to have devolved with no real goals left. It would have been great to see the Company board as a bunch of immoral and competent assholes instead of just the overtrusting, cowardly, ineffective antagonists we get. They should have been way more antagonistic.
Oh yeah and Edward pretty much raped Mendoza, impregnating her with his brother clones after stealing Alec's body. And she just loses any and all her character to become a smiling trophy wife by the end. Ugh. It annoyed me so much in Machine's Child when all she did was meet the needs of her new 3 Time Stooges. If I was gonna rewrite this, I'd have her separate herself from Edward and face off with him at the end with the help of Alec and Nicholas. Edward should have been the villain and taken out of the picture by the end. Mendoza just excuses all his abuse and then becomes barely a shell of her former self.
Blah. Blah on this book. Blah, I say!
The Company series is a time travel series where Dr. Zeus Inc goes back in time and takes people from different time periods and turns them into immortal cyborgs.
I will say I liked the parts with Suleyman/Latif/Sarai, Budu/Hearst/Joseph and bits and Lewis, whenever he gets a chance to shine. I wish I could say more in favor of this book, it fell short on every conceivable level.
The ending was just terrible. They all get superpowers and remain a secret cabal of immortals that now have Q like powers? Yeah, that doesn't really cut it for me. It's too easy. The ending was so bad I want to make the entire books into a series just so I can rewrite the ending.
The last two books would have been much better if Baker had brought back her older characters that she never got back to. I really liked Van Drouten as a character and she only gets one brief phone call scene. Imarte never comes back and she was incredible. Same for Oscar and Einar. Baker dropped the ball on so many things, but mainly the text degrades starting in Machines Child and just does not get better. There is a disturbing pattern of Edward's dominance bordering on abusive that Mendoza perpetually forgives, and there is something sickening in that. I don't really fully get that Edward has really changed much by the end. He never says, hey sorry for being an arrogant dickhead or anything. I didn't love that Christianity just dies out, either. I thought that was a shitty ending for Nicholas, who seems to have godlike powers himself now but doesn't go back in time to find out if Jesus was real or not. Maybe Baker just gave up on his whole plotline of existential crisis of faith and doubting the existence of God. That was a pretty major thing for him to go through and there seems to be no resolve whatsoever for him.
Alec fares a little better. He grows up in his own way more than any other character so I was at least satisfied with his story arc. The Captain is the dullest character and I wish he would just stop with the pirate talk by book 7. Just have him talk normally, it would be a sign his character gets true sentience if he isn't able to escape his initial programming.
All of the villains are just so cartoonishly stupid. Labienus and Aegeus actually have the best scene in this book, by FAR, where both of their mutual sides who hate each other get together for a really fancy dinner party for The Silence, which is the last known use of time travel. All of the series has been a question of what happens during The Silence where time communication ceases. The best scene involves all of the most unlikeable characters plus some new people we don't know, and they all have their bodies fall apart and rapidly deteriorate into piles of mush. Thank Victor for that, his revenge for the Plague Club creating all of humanity's worst diseases. These are the villains who made every known plague and experimented on humans, did really horrible torture on other immortals...all those people just melt in a Raiders of the Lost Ark level of death scene. They can all be reconstituted later, but we don't see that at all. We have no idea what happens to them, if they actually are brought back or if they are also skulls. I don't know.
So Aegeus and Labienus plotted against every other immortal to kill them permanently, which was pretty badass of him, but everyone found out and then declared war when they discovered what he did. So his cabal melts to death, but it's only temporary. But what about the remaining cabal when they are reconstituted with the cyberbrains? Wouldn't there be friction between those cabals that wanted to kill other immortals and each other? They wanted to kill everyone else. They also plotted against each other and both lose in the end, and only Labienus and Aegeus are regulated to just mere skulls, never to be reborn again. A better ending is someone steals their skulls so they get to be out there, lurking.
All of the Company characters are very flat. The 3 nerds from the Adonai project are there but they're all just annoying. No real development and they can't even serve as comedic support. We never really got to know Lopez as a character so when he interacts with the Company board it just seems like who gives a crap? We have no idea what his past has been like so it's hard to empathize with his plight. The board members are just way too stupid for me to believe. Their total ineptitude just seems unlikely. The immortals truly do seem to be the only real non Idiocracy humans left in the future world, with most people reverting to an almost childlike fragility resembling the Eloi from the Time Machine. This was probably a purposeful move on Baker's part, with shades of other dystopias creeping in. The overprotective and hypersensitive future that portrays monitors preventing people from hugging without a license and locks people away for the slightest infractions of anger gets to just keep chugging on. Ratlin and Quean Barbie, who are what is left of another species of humans mistaken for Gray Aliens, are the only non autistic members of their species, which can construct mathematical wonders but not be able to communicate linguistically. So they are hybrids and they resemble a cross between humans and Gray aliens. Ratlin is like some kind of Dickensian villain saying old timey phrases and cackling a lot. Quean Barbie is in charge of her autistic gray alien warren, they all live like hobbits or mole people, only filthier. So the two of them become Team Rocket and just fly off screaming at each other in their UFO as it careens across the horizon as they're about to kill each other. Goodbye, villains who are both cartoonish and one dimensional! Okay. That's...remarkably disappointing but okay.
The immortals decide to listen to Mendoza and her 3 Time Stooges. The governments agree to keep everything secret when the data about their hidden tax evasion is made evident. As an ending, just what in the world was she thinking? So that's the ending. Okay. No.
I just don't accept that this is the ending. Tiara winds up with Hearst? Yeah, sure okay but...can you show me how her character changed after she acclimated to the outside world, outside of getting to go shopping? You built this character up throughout this whole book over way more interesting characters and she doesn't even merit a scene where she's reacting to her new world? Ugh.
Joseph is just reduced to a comedic foil near the end. There was no tenderness really showcased between him and Mendoza to show their reconciliation. No Shakespearean moment of revelation and then forgiveness. That would have been the way to go with that plotline arc. Joseph and Mendoza barely talk to each other at the end at all.
Dr. Zeus the program came and went rather quickly. He never develops as a character, though. He just pops into existence and Nicholas deletes him or some shit. Uh. Zeus should have interacted more with characters from throughout the series, showing that he has developed rapport with them, possibly especially with Labienus and Aegeus, who he wants to support alongside the 3 Time Stooges. This is what I'm calling them, it just seems appropriate. The character's final confrontation with Nicholas is visually pretty fluff. No real substance. He represented the "heart" of the Company and we got really creepy references to him throughout the books, and yet he never materializes as a real character, just a creepy voice giving orders now and then. There was no deep characterization here and it seems very cheap.
And then they all become their own gods and fuck off. Or something. Lewis doesn't wind up in love with anyone, he winds up working for Edward, which is a very unsatisfying ending to me. Honestly, it would have made more sense for Mendoza to ditch all three Adonai clones and just choose Lewis instead. It would have made such a better ending. If you think about how this book ends with Mendoza dancing with all three of her 3 Time Stooges as they phase in and out of reality as they dance with her, taking turns with the lead. Okay. Barf. Sorry. I just...I can't with this. This is too much. The whole bad romantic arc....
Which by the way, involves her giving birth to two of her lovers, Nicholas and Alec, raising them as children, and Edward takes over as her husband, raising his two clones as his sons. Okay. I need to just...none of this needed to be done. But that's what she went with. Why not, if you must go with this as an idea, have them just whip up an artificial womb type device? They can do anything else in this freaking deux ex machina of a novel. It's so creepy. They did an American Dad episode like this where Haley has to give birth to Jeff after he dies. I can't believe there are two plotlines involving that situation on the same planet. But there you have it. Nicholas seems to just want to party with Mendoza once he hits 17 Again, and I guess since that's how she's supposed to look agewise, but...it's still gross that she becomes his mother and then his lover again. Ew. Same for Alec. Ew. Also I guess Mendoza never aged up again from 14 when she was brought back to life after she was taken apart. But I just refused to picture that ever. I decided that in Machine's Child to ignore it altogether and picture her at 18 or mid 20s.
Here's why Lewis and Mendoza would be a better ending. She basically becomes mother to Nicholas and Alec and at the end, what they SHOULD do is heal as individuals and go on with their lives without her, the way you do when you leave home, leave your parental figure. She sacrifices everything for them throughout the course of the books, time and again. It would make far more sense for her to tell them that they could never have the same kind of relationship again, because it had just become something much different.
Edward as a character doesn't ever strike me as worthy of anyone's love. He's the most pompous, arrogant, belligerent, uncompromising cunt of a man I've read about since Malta's father from the Liveship Traders series. I don't care for him. I don't care about him. He annoys me. His attempts to better his brothers by raising them didn't ever seem to go well. He doesn't really grow into the role of a father, ever. He just becomes a strict disciplinarian. It doesn't really gel well with me that he slides on by in all this without really evolving either. He is never right about anything that I can see, and Mendoza just goes along with giving all her power over to him, even when he destroys her Crome's radiation without her permission. To take it for himself and his brothers. Gross.
They show up at the end, declare themselves to be superpowered, offer superpowers to all the other immortals in exchange for not murdering all the Company humans. So no one in the Company goes to jail for like, torture or anything. Even though they ordered torture facilities. And made thousands of people slaves for millennia. That's...all okay. They all take plea deals to go do science or retire quietly. So the governments get a whole bunch of art, treasure, antiques, etc. They get museums for all that. Okay. Great. I guess.
Only, no one goes to jail for slavery or torture or murder. There's that.
Alec just decides to Clark Kent it along with his fellow immortals, whose lives will be forever secret in spite of all the thousands of years they worked to preserve genetic diversity, biodiversity, every artifact humanity made worth saving that would have been lost without them...no recognition for all of that. And the Enforcers become security guards and mercenaries for governments with superviolent criminals. Okay. That's...okay.
Only...it would have been way better if the truth came out about immortals being real, and give them the prestige they deserve after millennia of preserving everything about humanity's past. No, all they get is the ability to make babies, because making babies is important for immortals. Not, you know, becoming the natural leaders of a world that desperately needs their guidance. No, they're just going to let humans do whatever and they'll just watch.
One could argue that keeping it a secret is the most expected ending. Even if you still go with that idea and their lives have to be a secret, can it at least be more interesting? Great, Latif got together with his immortal mother who raised him and had a baby with her. Um. Gross. That's gross. I'm detecting a pattern of incestual relationships in this book. The Oedipal comments seal the deal on that and the book's obvious approval of this penchant for mother son incest is slightly nauseating.
I always pictured Hearst and Lewis getting together since they met before, and hitting it off, becoming partners in crime together. Two tycoons living side by side, best of buds. And I would have loved to see him paired with Mendoza at the end because he's just more deserving. He's the underdog. He's the survivor. He's the one that loved her for who she truly was, not wanting to change her into the perfect mate the way Edward does. Alec was always too emotionally needy and Nicholas is a spiritual wreck. It would be better for Mendoza to start her new life over with someone new and walk away from the quite frankly, way too complicated and freaky deaky shit she wound up just embracing.
Or if not that, bring Marlene Dietrich back, since she and Lewis spent a night together in the 30s. Maybe unfreeze her from time and replace her with an android or something. Make her immortal and pair her with Lewis so Lewis has a happy ending. Or pair Lewis with Hearst. Hell, pair Lewis with anyone! Anything would be better than this ending where he and Joseph just fawn over Mendoza's new 3 Time Stooges family.
Just...no. They all deserved more dignity than this. They all get magic superpowers that the author pulled out of her ass. They realize "matter and time are perception". So then they become Q. She doesn't even really explain how Crome's radiation could transfer from consciousness to consciousness, as it is described in previous books as being responsible for psychic abilities. Everything is just lovey dovey on the utopia island beyond time with Mendoza and the 3 Time Stooges. Again, barf.
And seriously, I loved Imarte, Oscar and Einar as characters and it's just disappointing they all disappeared without endings. And Victor's ending sucked. He just falls asleep forever. Okay. A way better ending would be for him to discuss the son he made immortal in San Francisco and tell that story. We never found out about that kid he made immortal! We didn't get to see Nan and Kalugin reunite. What a great scene that would have been. We just don't get enough of that. Really show us that ending between those two characters.
A much, much better ending would involve the immortals coming together to stop the Gray alien humans (homo umbratillis) from taking revenge against humans. The poison chocolate plotline was just so stupid. These are the genius beings with super technology powers? It seems like they forgot all about how to make things without the hybrids making them do things. Their entire species seems to have devolved with no real goals left. It would have been great to see the Company board as a bunch of immoral and competent assholes instead of just the overtrusting, cowardly, ineffective antagonists we get. They should have been way more antagonistic.
Oh yeah and Edward pretty much raped Mendoza, impregnating her with his brother clones after stealing Alec's body. And she just loses any and all her character to become a smiling trophy wife by the end. Ugh. It annoyed me so much in Machine's Child when all she did was meet the needs of her new 3 Time Stooges. If I was gonna rewrite this, I'd have her separate herself from Edward and face off with him at the end with the help of Alec and Nicholas. Edward should have been the villain and taken out of the picture by the end. Mendoza just excuses all his abuse and then becomes barely a shell of her former self.
Blah. Blah on this book. Blah, I say!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 4, 2018
REREAD #1: 1 October 2018 - 4 October 2018 (9/10)
Another great reread and again, a lovely conclusion to the series and the ongoing story. Like with The Machine's Child it looses a point compared to my original reread because I'm even less happy with dubious consent than I was last time. It's a surprisingly low-key book considering what we've been building towards and I feel like I should be disappointed with the way it all come together so bloodlessly, but I'm not.
Next I shall, around reading other books, work my way through the various short stories I've managed to get hold of since 2007 and reread the ones I had access to back then.
ORIGINAL READ: 4 August 2007 - 6 August 2007 (10/10)
The forces gathering to seize power finally move on the Company. The immortal Lewis wakes to find himself blinded, crippled, and left with no weapons but his voice, his memory, and the friendship of one extraordinary little girl. Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, resurrected Victorian superman, plans for world domination. The immortal Mendoza makes a desperate bargain to delay him. Enforcer Budu, assisted by Joseph, enlists an unexpected ally in his plans to free his old warriors and bring judgment on his former masters. Executive Facilitator Suleyman uses his intelligence operation to uncover the secret of Alpha-Omega, vital to the mortals' survival. The mortal masters of the Company, terrified of a coup, invest in a plan they believe will terminate their immortal servants. And they awaken a powerful AI whom they call Dr Zeus. This web of a story is filled with great climaxes, wonderful surprises, and gripping characters many readers have grown to love or hate.
Well, the roller coaster ride is over. The series is finished. And wow, what a ride it was.
Considering that Baker had about eight different factions (I'm not 100% sure how many, I kept losing track) all making plans for what would happen at the moment of Silence, I am highly impressed by the way she brought everything together and made it all fit together.
In a way, the solution was startlingly simple after all the machinations involved in getting there. I sort of feel like it should have been a little anti-climatic, but it wasn't. Instead, we slipped neatly into the resolution and fitted there rather nicely.
The main story of Mendoza and her men continues apace. I was terribly worried about Edward and what he was going to do by the end of the previous book, and again, Baker works out a neat solution. At it's topmost level, there's a little bit of a 'squick factor' in what she does, so I was very impressed with the way she made everything fall into place. This all led to a most delightful epilogue of a few paragraphs that really summed up Mendoza's "happy ending". (And the opportunity this provides to totally disconcert Joseph was a delight.)
I also thought the reason for the Silence, once we found out what it was, was so beautifully simple it was totally brilliant.
I did get a little lost at one point, but as it was the moment when she jumped from "science" to "super science" I'm willing to take the blame myself and say that my brain failed to make the jump with the author. I still got the whole drift of where she was going and I'm happy with that, but I'm sure I missed some nice subtleties. However, give me a few years and I'm sure I'll be reading the series again (if I can get my grubby little paws on copies of the earlier books) so hopefully it will make more sense then. I find that that is usually the case for me.
I also found myself reading this book in small snippets instead of digesting in whole in one big gulp as I did with the earlier volumes. I think this was a combination of two thing - my health at the time and the fact I didn't want the story to end almost exactly as much as I wanted to find out the end of it. This didn't hurt my reading at all and I enjoyed my progress through the book and the ending.
So even if I did get a little confused for a bit, The Sons of Heaven got fully marks from me and the series as a whole would get a very solid 9/10 from this satisfied reader.
The Sons of Heaven
Kage Baker
10/10
As a reminder and guide, the full series is:
In the Garden of Iden
Sky Coyote
Mendoza in Hollywood
The Graveyard Game
The Life of the World to Come
The Children of the Company
The Machine's Child
The Sons of Heaven
There are also two books of short stories - Black Projects, White Knights and Gods and Pawns. All the stories are fun, but I feel the only one you really need to read to help the series make sense is Welcome to Olympus, Mr Hearst in Gods and Pawns.
[Copied from LibraryThing.]
Another great reread and again, a lovely conclusion to the series and the ongoing story. Like with The Machine's Child it looses a point compared to my original reread because I'm even less happy with dubious consent than I was last time. It's a surprisingly low-key book considering what we've been building towards and I feel like I should be disappointed with the way it all come together so bloodlessly, but I'm not.
Next I shall, around reading other books, work my way through the various short stories I've managed to get hold of since 2007 and reread the ones I had access to back then.
ORIGINAL READ: 4 August 2007 - 6 August 2007 (10/10)
The forces gathering to seize power finally move on the Company. The immortal Lewis wakes to find himself blinded, crippled, and left with no weapons but his voice, his memory, and the friendship of one extraordinary little girl. Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, resurrected Victorian superman, plans for world domination. The immortal Mendoza makes a desperate bargain to delay him. Enforcer Budu, assisted by Joseph, enlists an unexpected ally in his plans to free his old warriors and bring judgment on his former masters. Executive Facilitator Suleyman uses his intelligence operation to uncover the secret of Alpha-Omega, vital to the mortals' survival. The mortal masters of the Company, terrified of a coup, invest in a plan they believe will terminate their immortal servants. And they awaken a powerful AI whom they call Dr Zeus. This web of a story is filled with great climaxes, wonderful surprises, and gripping characters many readers have grown to love or hate.
Well, the roller coaster ride is over. The series is finished. And wow, what a ride it was.
Considering that Baker had about eight different factions (I'm not 100% sure how many, I kept losing track) all making plans for what would happen at the moment of Silence, I am highly impressed by the way she brought everything together and made it all fit together.
In a way, the solution was startlingly simple after all the machinations involved in getting there. I sort of feel like it should have been a little anti-climatic, but it wasn't. Instead, we slipped neatly into the resolution and fitted there rather nicely.
The main story of Mendoza and her men continues apace. I was terribly worried about Edward and what he was going to do by the end of the previous book, and again, Baker works out a neat solution. At it's topmost level, there's a little bit of a 'squick factor' in what she does, so I was very impressed with the way she made everything fall into place. This all led to a most delightful epilogue of a few paragraphs that really summed up Mendoza's "happy ending". (And the opportunity this provides to totally disconcert Joseph was a delight.)
I also thought the reason for the Silence, once we found out what it was, was so beautifully simple it was totally brilliant.
I did get a little lost at one point, but as it was the moment when she jumped from "science" to "super science" I'm willing to take the blame myself and say that my brain failed to make the jump with the author. I still got the whole drift of where she was going and I'm happy with that, but I'm sure I missed some nice subtleties. However, give me a few years and I'm sure I'll be reading the series again (if I can get my grubby little paws on copies of the earlier books) so hopefully it will make more sense then. I find that that is usually the case for me.
I also found myself reading this book in small snippets instead of digesting in whole in one big gulp as I did with the earlier volumes. I think this was a combination of two thing - my health at the time and the fact I didn't want the story to end almost exactly as much as I wanted to find out the end of it. This didn't hurt my reading at all and I enjoyed my progress through the book and the ending.
So even if I did get a little confused for a bit, The Sons of Heaven got fully marks from me and the series as a whole would get a very solid 9/10 from this satisfied reader.
The Sons of Heaven
Kage Baker
10/10
As a reminder and guide, the full series is:
In the Garden of Iden
Sky Coyote
Mendoza in Hollywood
The Graveyard Game
The Life of the World to Come
The Children of the Company
The Machine's Child
The Sons of Heaven
There are also two books of short stories - Black Projects, White Knights and Gods and Pawns. All the stories are fun, but I feel the only one you really need to read to help the series make sense is Welcome to Olympus, Mr Hearst in Gods and Pawns.
[Copied from LibraryThing.]
July 17, 2011
The finale to The Company series.
After blitzing through all eight books of this series, the finale comes as somewhat of a big disappointment as the revelation and resolution of the end came in an anti-climactic fashion, due to part of its deus ex machina nature. This is in some part due to one of the biggest pitfalls of time travel stories; the question of how to answer all the temporal divergent plots in a logical manner without causing a paradox. For "The Sons of Heaven", the solution seems have been in the vein of to "let God sort out the mess" as the ending was literally a deus ex machina ("God from the machine") as the main characters somehow unlocked the secrets of time and space, and for all intents and purposes, became omnipotent beings. And with that, dictated the end of the conflict, and thus the series. This is not usually an issue, if the result was due to some conflict the protagonist had to overcome. Instead, the end result seemed to have been divorced from any main plot progression making this seem come out of nowhere with no rational. Yes, Edward was able to somehow discover the true meaning of space-time, but that was also due to his own deus ex machina moment, which makes it more than one too many.
This is all the more disappointing, as Kage Baker was able to effectively build the suspense of the Silence through effective story telling and interesting characters. For the end to come as such, feels really out of place. Instead of a complex and engaging story, we are treated to a Twin Peaks-like tangent, in a "Swiss Family Mendoza" bizarro story that had almost no relevant connection to the other subplots. If this development with Alex/Nicholas/Edward and Mendoza was written in its own book, it would have at least made for some interesting reading, similar to "The Man Who Folded Himself" or "The Time Traveler's Wife", books that deal with the personal stories of living out of time. However, as part of a story that was supposed to be the buildup to the Silence, it felt really out of place, effectively weakening the overall story, instead of strengthening it.
For seven volumes, Kage Baker has managed to keep the series and story alive due to the strength of her characters and by subtly building up the mystery of the Silence. It's sad to see that effort seem to be squandered away with this last volume.
After blitzing through all eight books of this series, the finale comes as somewhat of a big disappointment as the revelation and resolution of the end came in an anti-climactic fashion, due to part of its deus ex machina nature. This is in some part due to one of the biggest pitfalls of time travel stories; the question of how to answer all the temporal divergent plots in a logical manner without causing a paradox. For "The Sons of Heaven", the solution seems have been in the vein of to "let God sort out the mess" as the ending was literally a deus ex machina ("God from the machine") as the main characters somehow unlocked the secrets of time and space, and for all intents and purposes, became omnipotent beings. And with that, dictated the end of the conflict, and thus the series. This is not usually an issue, if the result was due to some conflict the protagonist had to overcome. Instead, the end result seemed to have been divorced from any main plot progression making this seem come out of nowhere with no rational. Yes, Edward was able to somehow discover the true meaning of space-time, but that was also due to his own deus ex machina moment, which makes it more than one too many.
This is all the more disappointing, as Kage Baker was able to effectively build the suspense of the Silence through effective story telling and interesting characters. For the end to come as such, feels really out of place. Instead of a complex and engaging story, we are treated to a Twin Peaks-like tangent, in a "Swiss Family Mendoza" bizarro story that had almost no relevant connection to the other subplots. If this development with Alex/Nicholas/Edward and Mendoza was written in its own book, it would have at least made for some interesting reading, similar to "The Man Who Folded Himself" or "The Time Traveler's Wife", books that deal with the personal stories of living out of time. However, as part of a story that was supposed to be the buildup to the Silence, it felt really out of place, effectively weakening the overall story, instead of strengthening it.
For seven volumes, Kage Baker has managed to keep the series and story alive due to the strength of her characters and by subtly building up the mystery of the Silence. It's sad to see that effort seem to be squandered away with this last volume.
March 13, 2010
The last book of the Company series! After nine novels the question of what happens when the Silence finally hits is a huge one. I really enjoyed this book, but it just didn't live up to the build-up. The narration is split between many different characters, all preparing for the year 2355, and so it reads more like a collection of short stories than a complete novel. I was interested in, but did not like, the Mendoza-Edward-Alec-Nicholas (the time travelling quartet) storyline, which has dragged down the entire series and is slightly creepy and paternalistic besides. Lewis spends time with the little people under the hill, who are easily the spookiest part of the series. But the one I really loved reading about was Victor, who spies for each of the two main Immortal groups but has an allegiance all his own.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
So the mystery is finally revealed--in 2355, all of Dr. Zeus converges on a single island. Victor takes out the two big bad Immortal groups in a single swipe, leaving Suleyman's crew, Budu's Enforcers, the mortals and the time-travelling quartet to battle it out. Alec convinces everyone to let him take over and gently guide--not rule--the mortals to a less destructive manner of living. It is very anti-climactic.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
So the mystery is finally revealed--in 2355, all of Dr. Zeus converges on a single island. Victor takes out the two big bad Immortal groups in a single swipe, leaving Suleyman's crew, Budu's Enforcers, the mortals and the time-travelling quartet to battle it out. Alec convinces everyone to let him take over and gently guide--not rule--the mortals to a less destructive manner of living. It is very anti-climactic.
April 24, 2012
Having read a few of the early books in the series,when it came into my hands I thought I might as well read the last one, seeing as it's not likely I will read all the others leading up to it. I am usually scrupulous verging on obbsessive about such details. It may be the best way after all.
There are a lot of vivid characters in SoH.Some of them are cyborgs and some of them have been made immortal. There are even cyborg babies who are reincarnated versions of past lovers of the mother, although thats just a part of it....
The writing is swift and incisive. It's possible to figure out what's going on, but there were only a few characters I remembered and the gaps in my knowledge gave an incoherence to what may very well be a masterful drawing together of diverse threads to a triumphant conclusion.
There are a lot of vivid characters in SoH.Some of them are cyborgs and some of them have been made immortal. There are even cyborg babies who are reincarnated versions of past lovers of the mother, although thats just a part of it....
The writing is swift and incisive. It's possible to figure out what's going on, but there were only a few characters I remembered and the gaps in my knowledge gave an incoherence to what may very well be a masterful drawing together of diverse threads to a triumphant conclusion.
December 10, 2010
Honestly, by the end of this series I felt like Joseph. I was so freaking sick of Nicholas Harpole/Edward Hallifax Haliburton Northup Grummon Fairfield/Alec. So the fact that he turns into an omnipotent godlike figure who saves the day wasn't the best way to end a great series. But you know... I absolutely loved this series as a whole. I love Joseph, Budu, Suleymann, Latif, Lewis, Labenius, Victor, Juan Batisita, Nef, etc. etc. Oh and I guess Mendoza is okay. But sorta like Fringe you ain't watching it for Olivia Dunham. You are watching it for Walter Bishop. So yea, I enjoyed this final book in the Company series, as all the many dangling plot threads from previous books were wrapped up in a mostly satisfying manner, which in a series as large as this is a great outcome.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2020
Such a disappointment. The series long plot of the attempt to overthrow Dr Zeus ended with a muffled thud. The mystery of Mendoza's Chrome radiation is resolved, but not well: Still, I could have lived with all that. But the Mendoza Adonai plot was awful in every way. Edward is evil: Somehow Mendoza is okay with this? And we are supposed to be as well?
I wish I hadn't read it, and had come up with my own imagined ending to the series instead.
I wish I hadn't read it, and had come up with my own imagined ending to the series instead.
May 30, 2025
I love this series! Comfort re-read 6/11/11.
12/29/13 still another reread.
8/4/16. Another reread. This series finale is crazily out there, if creative. Yet somehow, upon reading, I can't begin to fathom any other way she could have tied up all the loose ends so perfectly, and (weirdly) satisfactorily!
12/29/13 still another reread.
8/4/16. Another reread. This series finale is crazily out there, if creative. Yet somehow, upon reading, I can't begin to fathom any other way she could have tied up all the loose ends so perfectly, and (weirdly) satisfactorily!
October 16, 2024
I should say that giving ★★★★★ is not strictly for this book but for the completion of the series. The book is certainly above average of the series though.
In summary, this book gives the much wanted and expected closure to the series, and it gives it in a satisfying way. Finally, I do share the view of eternal bliss depicted by Baker... so let's dance!
In summary, this book gives the much wanted and expected closure to the series, and it gives it in a satisfying way. Finally, I do share the view of eternal bliss depicted by Baker... so let's dance!
December 30, 2013
Either this is meant as some sort of cosmic irony - our heroes' struggles having created the very monster they were fighting against - or it's just a really really bad ending to the series.
The parts with Lewis and Princess Tiara Parakeet were good, as was Victor's dinner party, but the ending was the train wreck to end all train wrecks.
The parts with Lewis and Princess Tiara Parakeet were good, as was Victor's dinner party, but the ending was the train wreck to end all train wrecks.
August 24, 2007
FABULOUS. One of the best science fiction series I've read not just recently, but ever. Warning, though - this series is one of the few that absolutely have to be read in order. The first is In the Garden of Iden. The short story collections form part of the plot, too, so don't skip them.
September 28, 2024
Maybe it’s not fair to judge this book harshly after having read most of the series irregularly between 2001 and 2007, and even somehow skipped #6 altogether. Because this is the wrap-up, it does tend to expect the reader to remember the characters and events from the earlier volumes.
Of course I do remember Mendoza and her various love interests well enough, but characters like Joseph, Lewis, Budu, Suleyman… these are less memorable, and the conflicts and factions that form among them seem rather arbitrary. Meanwhile, the hapless incompetents that make up the Company are played as a joke, though the nature of Dr. Zeus himself is at least mildly interesting.
The worst part, for me, is that much of the book is taken up with Mendoza not being the clever, resourceful woman we know from previous books, but being a decidedly flaky motherhood figure with a questionable relationship to the other members of her “family”. In fact, I found the whole family drama to be a bit too bizarre and unsavory - maybe reminiscent of the protagonists of Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast - but perhaps more accurately, a group that a writer might build up to be the antagonists, since the reader is unlikely to identify with any of them.
The world itself seems to have expanded and become too grand to be adequately filled by what these characters have become. The threads and plots and machinations come to a fairly satisfying conclusion, and Alec’s part to play was nicely done. But for the most part I was less interested than I would have liked to be in what happened in this book.
Of course I do remember Mendoza and her various love interests well enough, but characters like Joseph, Lewis, Budu, Suleyman… these are less memorable, and the conflicts and factions that form among them seem rather arbitrary. Meanwhile, the hapless incompetents that make up the Company are played as a joke, though the nature of Dr. Zeus himself is at least mildly interesting.
The worst part, for me, is that much of the book is taken up with Mendoza not being the clever, resourceful woman we know from previous books, but being a decidedly flaky motherhood figure with a questionable relationship to the other members of her “family”. In fact, I found the whole family drama to be a bit too bizarre and unsavory - maybe reminiscent of the protagonists of Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast - but perhaps more accurately, a group that a writer might build up to be the antagonists, since the reader is unlikely to identify with any of them.
The world itself seems to have expanded and become too grand to be adequately filled by what these characters have become. The threads and plots and machinations come to a fairly satisfying conclusion, and Alec’s part to play was nicely done. But for the most part I was less interested than I would have liked to be in what happened in this book.
July 21, 2018
Been a long time getting here, but after diversion and digressions, this is it. The immortals versus the mortals, and it must be said at first glance it doesn't seem like much of a competition, the mortals being a rather limp and unimpressive lot, for all that they created the cyborgs to live through all of recorded history preserving knowledge and artifacts to profit the Company in the future. However, there's a lot going on, with factions of evil cyborgs and factions of good (ish) cyborgs racing to be the first to defeat the Company and, basically, take over the world. Then there's poor Lewis trapped under a hill, and Mendoza and the three recombinant Enforcers she has loved and lost at various points during the series, engaged in a bizarre family arrangement or experiment outside of time under the watchful eye of a powerful piratical AI. Who will rule all in the end, if anyone?
April 15, 2018
The last book in this series brings everything together quite wonderfully. Don’t read it unless you’ve read the others, though. This is a series awash in subplots and subordinate characters, and if you’re not already acquainted with them, you’ll be lost.
In striving for an epic finish, some of the charms of the earliest books have been lost. I have to say that Mendoza never does fully recover her personality. But I’m still impressed by the way the author manages to tie up all these elaborate threads. And finally, we get to see what happens at The Great Silence, the End of Days!
In striving for an epic finish, some of the charms of the earliest books have been lost. I have to say that Mendoza never does fully recover her personality. But I’m still impressed by the way the author manages to tie up all these elaborate threads. And finally, we get to see what happens at The Great Silence, the End of Days!
January 7, 2019
The end! Of history! This was accomplished without too much letdown, primarily because I hadn't been expecting an apocalypse. These books got progressively more batshit crazy as they went, and I think my main complaint is that the obvious short-sightedness of making ANYTHING immortal was never addressed. I mean, at some point the heat death of the universe is going to become a problem for these folks. And I'm not sure that the introduction of the possibility of escaping time makes that better.
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