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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
I love this entire book series.
The character of Mendoza stands out as one of the most impressive characters in science fiction period. This series has some of my favorite ideas for a science fiction series. I love the mysteries of Zeus Inc. and i absolutely love the worldbuilding of going back in time to carefully observe, make secret bases, recruit smart children as secret immortal cyborgs who grow up into agents, and all of the many backstories. I love pretty much every idea in this book.
Essentially, it's a story about a woman who is as modern as you can get raised by people from the future, who falls in love with a man in pre-Elizabethan era England. The character of Joseph, who saves her early on, passes himself off as her father as she collects botanical specimens which will later become extinct, at least until the Company miraculously finds lost specimens in the future. It's a brilliantly capitalist use of time travel. And of course, things go wrong but along the way is a story at its core of values. Mendoza falls in love with someone that shares some of her ideals but philosophically they are in ultimate opposition in a few key areas. The back and forth exchange between them leads to many conversations which are intelligent and thoughtfully written. Joseph makes a great foil to Mendoza, counteracting her own arguments with ages of past experience.
Catastrophe becomes memory. It's something to be said that trauma fades with time, but with Mendoza I don't really get that, and it's fascinating to see that several centuries later down the line, one horrifying event can be seared into her memory to the point where it still has a significant impact. This is truly a great story of two star-crossed lovers.
The book is wonderfully divided between a modern culture living side by side with ancient / centuries old cultures and juxtaposes them well. It's a very anthropological take on the time travel genre and it's probably the best time travel storyline I've ever come across. Highly recommended.
The character of Mendoza stands out as one of the most impressive characters in science fiction period. This series has some of my favorite ideas for a science fiction series. I love the mysteries of Zeus Inc. and i absolutely love the worldbuilding of going back in time to carefully observe, make secret bases, recruit smart children as secret immortal cyborgs who grow up into agents, and all of the many backstories. I love pretty much every idea in this book.
Essentially, it's a story about a woman who is as modern as you can get raised by people from the future, who falls in love with a man in pre-Elizabethan era England. The character of Joseph, who saves her early on, passes himself off as her father as she collects botanical specimens which will later become extinct, at least until the Company miraculously finds lost specimens in the future. It's a brilliantly capitalist use of time travel. And of course, things go wrong but along the way is a story at its core of values. Mendoza falls in love with someone that shares some of her ideals but philosophically they are in ultimate opposition in a few key areas. The back and forth exchange between them leads to many conversations which are intelligent and thoughtfully written. Joseph makes a great foil to Mendoza, counteracting her own arguments with ages of past experience.
Catastrophe becomes memory. It's something to be said that trauma fades with time, but with Mendoza I don't really get that, and it's fascinating to see that several centuries later down the line, one horrifying event can be seared into her memory to the point where it still has a significant impact. This is truly a great story of two star-crossed lovers.
The book is wonderfully divided between a modern culture living side by side with ancient / centuries old cultures and juxtaposes them well. It's a very anthropological take on the time travel genre and it's probably the best time travel storyline I've ever come across. Highly recommended.
If I'd read this one first, I would have never read any of the others.
Historical science fiction romance, In the Garden of Iden is a book of The Company, a group of scientists who use time travel to recruit children in past eras and develop them into agents. In the Garden of Iden follows one of The Company's agents as she is recruited from the Spanish Inquisition at age four, completes The Company training, and goes on her first field assignment to England during the Protestant Reformation and Bloody Mary's reign.
In the Garden of Iden is primarily a 16th century romance. The main character is 17 and acts annoyingly young at times, but with themes of free will vs duty, zealotry vs conviction, and slavery vs death, In the Garden of Iden is not a light book. Comparisons to The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis cannot be avoided. Both deal with limited time travel by a select group of people. Both have rules that travelers should remain aloof from locals, and both deal with the complications that arise when they don't. In the Garden of Iden is more grounded in history since agents live through the past in real time instead of jumping back and forth.
I loved the time-travel premise of this series and am looking forward to reading other books that follow different agents through different time periods and provide more details on the shady practices of The Company.
The reader in the audio edition, Janan Raouf, puts a lot into what has to be a difficult book to read. It was certainly a difficult book to listen to due to all of the accents. The main character is from Spain and thinks in unaccented English but speaks with a heavy Spanish accent. The other travelers also speak in Spanish accents while the locals use Elizabethan English. Occasionally characters use Latin or Greek. I found these sections easier since they were read as unaccented English.
In the Garden of Iden is primarily a 16th century romance. The main character is 17 and acts annoyingly young at times, but with themes of free will vs duty, zealotry vs conviction, and slavery vs death, In the Garden of Iden is not a light book. Comparisons to The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis cannot be avoided. Both deal with limited time travel by a select group of people. Both have rules that travelers should remain aloof from locals, and both deal with the complications that arise when they don't. In the Garden of Iden is more grounded in history since agents live through the past in real time instead of jumping back and forth.
I loved the time-travel premise of this series and am looking forward to reading other books that follow different agents through different time periods and provide more details on the shady practices of The Company.
The reader in the audio edition, Janan Raouf, puts a lot into what has to be a difficult book to read. It was certainly a difficult book to listen to due to all of the accents. The main character is from Spain and thinks in unaccented English but speaks with a heavy Spanish accent. The other travelers also speak in Spanish accents while the locals use Elizabethan English. Occasionally characters use Latin or Greek. I found these sections easier since they were read as unaccented English.
This is the first of The Company series. A spunky little girl is purchased from her parents and becomes an immortal in service to The Company. Not a bad story but in some cases the character's mental age goes up and down in strange ways and there are some anachronisms. Still an OK read.
This series is heartbreaking, confusing, beautiful, crazy, and compelling. Scenes have really stuck with me. I love the California settings...I just can't explain this book or any of them, though.
I need to own them, because I'm sure they benefit from re-reading.
I need to own them, because I'm sure they benefit from re-reading.
This book is a strange combination of thoughtful scifi + mostly fluffy romance. Things end poorly, which Mendoza notes early and often in her internal monologue. I thought the found family aspect of the Company's operatives stationed together was more interesting than the romance, but YMMV.
Mendoza is a character that I wanted to like more than I did. She seems to carry the Idiot Ball around with her wherever she goes. The book seems to want to write that off because she's young and in love, but... well, I was never THAT young. Other readers might not find it so grinding on their nerves. Her naivete was eventually Chekhov's Gun, destroying herself and Nicholas, and I appreciate that there were consequences. But, well. How many romances where the heroine's flightiness destroys the good man she loves does the world really need?
I'm hoping I connect better with the next book in the series, because this one had too much romance for me.
Mendoza is a character that I wanted to like more than I did. She seems to carry the Idiot Ball around with her wherever she goes. The book seems to want to write that off because she's young and in love, but... well, I was never THAT young. Other readers might not find it so grinding on their nerves. Her naivete was eventually Chekhov's Gun, destroying herself and Nicholas, and I appreciate that there were consequences. But, well. How many romances where the heroine's flightiness destroys the good man she loves does the world really need?
I'm hoping I connect better with the next book in the series, because this one had too much romance for me.
Time travel poses a host of complications, no matter which set of rules one follows. Plus, I mean, as cool as it might be to pop back to ancient Egypt or Rome or Tudor England for afternoon tea, I wouldn’t want to live there. Hello, indoor plumbing much? Flush toilets and high speed Internet? I like my “modern” conveniences, and I can understand why the first employees of the Company didn’t enjoy their duties much. And the Company happened to have a formula for immortality lying around. So, you know, it makes total sense to train contemporary people, make them immortal, and have them do your bidding. Collect genetic samples from extinct plants, rescue lost works of art … the sky is the limit.
Kage Baker has some pretty interesting rules going on in In the Garden of Iden, and she lays them out explicitly at the beginning of the book. So I’m not going to bore you with the details. Mendoza is a little girl languishing in the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition until she gets rescued and recruited by the Company. They make her immortal (yay, cyborgs!) and train her in history—past and future. She specializes in botany, which, for the Company, means she will spend most of her time identifying extinct plants and taking samples so they can be resurrected in the future.
Mendoza is rescued when she is about three or four, so she essentially grows up as a ward of the Company—and as an immortal cyborg (yes, there are immortal cyborg teenagers). This has the interesting result of estranging her from ordinary—such as it is in the sixteenth century—human society. She isn’t fond of ordinary humans and specializes in the New World, hoping for an isolated posting somewhere devoid of dense contemporary populations. Instead she gets assigned to a Spanish delegation to England, where she will study the exoticon plants in the garden of Sir Walter Iden. Much to her surprise, she falls in love with a contemporary Protestant at a time when Catholicism was just beginning to come back into vogue in England in a big—Bloody—way.
Mendoza makes for a great protagonist. Her prejudice against her fellow contemporary humans speaks volumes about how the Company operates. It’s kind of like a vast pyramid scheme—throughout the ages they’ve offered these people from the past the chance to transcend history and inherit a promised land in the future, provided they do the Company’s bidding. I’ve only read one novel, but I hope Baker explores this theme more and the ramifications of what happens when all these employees catch up to the Company in “the present”. I can’t help but feel there is going to be … friction. For instance, Mendoza’s counselor is apparently from a Paleolithic tribe—so he’s been on the job for quite some time. Isn’t there going to be a huge seniority issue in the future? Or is there something more sinister happening?
But I digress. Mendoza: she’s smart and opinionated without being too sarcastic for her own good. She is good at what she does but often oversteps or overreacts—quick-tempered is perhaps apt. Again, this is why she’s a good protagonist. She keeps things moving, keeps us in the action, but at the same time she can be meditative when necessary. Baker goes for an intimate portrayal of a (Catholic) English household during the brief Counter-Reformation. The friction between Nicolas and the rest of the household underscores Mendoza’s observations regarding how this conflict over religions and politics is brutal and barbaric, rendering them poignant when they might have been trite or overdone.
I’m not nearly as impressed by the supporting characters. Joseph is an interesting father figure for Mendoza, but ultimately he and Nef are really just foils for her without much in the way of character development for themselves. This is a little disappointing. Likewise, Sir Walter is more plot device than anything. Nicolas is fascinating in that he reminds me why I would hate to be alive during the sixteenth century, but that’s about it.
In the Garden of Iden reminds me of so many other period dramas. It spends a lot of time showing off its setting and focusing on the zeitgeist of the period at the expense of the plot. It’s a testament to Baker’s writing ability, then, that she can distract me long enough not to care about these things. I enjoyed Mendoza’s experience in England, watching her change from feeling superior to humans to sleeping with and loving a stupid human. And this is more of a historical novel than a science-fiction or time-travel story, despite what the trappings might otherwise imply. Baker has essentially swapped time-travel in for prophecy, for its most important contribution to the plot is Mendoza’s awareness of what the future holds—namely, a Protestant queen who becomes one of the most influential people in history. Hence, the science-fictional element of the book is the source of dramatic irony that transforms Mendoza’s romance with Nicolas into a classical tragedy.
This book didn’t quite blow me away like I was hoping it would after what I had read about it. But I’m glad I finally got around to reading it, and I’m looking forward to reading more of the series. Baker has done something different from the traditional “smash-and-grab” idea of time-travel artifact retrieval, and I’m interested to see where she takes it. Combined with a smart protagonist who has her share of flaws and failings, and you have a successful novel and the start of something good.
Kage Baker has some pretty interesting rules going on in In the Garden of Iden, and she lays them out explicitly at the beginning of the book. So I’m not going to bore you with the details. Mendoza is a little girl languishing in the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition until she gets rescued and recruited by the Company. They make her immortal (yay, cyborgs!) and train her in history—past and future. She specializes in botany, which, for the Company, means she will spend most of her time identifying extinct plants and taking samples so they can be resurrected in the future.
Mendoza is rescued when she is about three or four, so she essentially grows up as a ward of the Company—and as an immortal cyborg (yes, there are immortal cyborg teenagers). This has the interesting result of estranging her from ordinary—such as it is in the sixteenth century—human society. She isn’t fond of ordinary humans and specializes in the New World, hoping for an isolated posting somewhere devoid of dense contemporary populations. Instead she gets assigned to a Spanish delegation to England, where she will study the exoticon plants in the garden of Sir Walter Iden. Much to her surprise, she falls in love with a contemporary Protestant at a time when Catholicism was just beginning to come back into vogue in England in a big—Bloody—way.
Mendoza makes for a great protagonist. Her prejudice against her fellow contemporary humans speaks volumes about how the Company operates. It’s kind of like a vast pyramid scheme—throughout the ages they’ve offered these people from the past the chance to transcend history and inherit a promised land in the future, provided they do the Company’s bidding. I’ve only read one novel, but I hope Baker explores this theme more and the ramifications of what happens when all these employees catch up to the Company in “the present”. I can’t help but feel there is going to be … friction. For instance, Mendoza’s counselor is apparently from a Paleolithic tribe—so he’s been on the job for quite some time. Isn’t there going to be a huge seniority issue in the future? Or is there something more sinister happening?
But I digress. Mendoza: she’s smart and opinionated without being too sarcastic for her own good. She is good at what she does but often oversteps or overreacts—quick-tempered is perhaps apt. Again, this is why she’s a good protagonist. She keeps things moving, keeps us in the action, but at the same time she can be meditative when necessary. Baker goes for an intimate portrayal of a (Catholic) English household during the brief Counter-Reformation. The friction between Nicolas and the rest of the household underscores Mendoza’s observations regarding how this conflict over religions and politics is brutal and barbaric, rendering them poignant when they might have been trite or overdone.
I’m not nearly as impressed by the supporting characters. Joseph is an interesting father figure for Mendoza, but ultimately he and Nef are really just foils for her without much in the way of character development for themselves. This is a little disappointing. Likewise, Sir Walter is more plot device than anything. Nicolas is fascinating in that he reminds me why I would hate to be alive during the sixteenth century, but that’s about it.
In the Garden of Iden reminds me of so many other period dramas. It spends a lot of time showing off its setting and focusing on the zeitgeist of the period at the expense of the plot. It’s a testament to Baker’s writing ability, then, that she can distract me long enough not to care about these things. I enjoyed Mendoza’s experience in England, watching her change from feeling superior to humans to sleeping with and loving a stupid human. And this is more of a historical novel than a science-fiction or time-travel story, despite what the trappings might otherwise imply. Baker has essentially swapped time-travel in for prophecy, for its most important contribution to the plot is Mendoza’s awareness of what the future holds—namely, a Protestant queen who becomes one of the most influential people in history. Hence, the science-fictional element of the book is the source of dramatic irony that transforms Mendoza’s romance with Nicolas into a classical tragedy.
This book didn’t quite blow me away like I was hoping it would after what I had read about it. But I’m glad I finally got around to reading it, and I’m looking forward to reading more of the series. Baker has done something different from the traditional “smash-and-grab” idea of time-travel artifact retrieval, and I’m interested to see where she takes it. Combined with a smart protagonist who has her share of flaws and failings, and you have a successful novel and the start of something good.
For years, people have been telling me that if I love time travel (and I do), I’ve got to read The Company. And for years I didn’t, because the first books in the series weren’t available as ebooks. Well, now they are and I’ve read the first one, and — hmmm. Put it this way: I enjoyed the character, the concept of living through history without truly being a part of it, and the excellent portrayal of a teenager embarking on her first real everything (job, romance, life). I did not enjoy the sex scenes (oh god, he talks for his dick in a squeaky voice during sex) or the plot.
I think this is setting up, for the length of the series, the tale of how Mendoza, the main character, goes through the Company and history threshing machine, how the job and her immortality warp and change her and take important bits of her away, and I ... am not sure how I’m going to like that in the long run. But I’m willing to give it a try. It seems like it could be worth reading.
For this book — well, people told me I could skip it and start with book two, and while I am not exactly sorry I didn’t, this is more of an establishing book than a riveting story. I’m not sure who I’d recommend this to. History buffs, maybe? Or big fans of talking dicks, I guess.
I think this is setting up, for the length of the series, the tale of how Mendoza, the main character, goes through the Company and history threshing machine, how the job and her immortality warp and change her and take important bits of her away, and I ... am not sure how I’m going to like that in the long run. But I’m willing to give it a try. It seems like it could be worth reading.
For this book — well, people told me I could skip it and start with book two, and while I am not exactly sorry I didn’t, this is more of an establishing book than a riveting story. I’m not sure who I’d recommend this to. History buffs, maybe? Or big fans of talking dicks, I guess.
Interesting, and I am looking forward to reading more in the series (it's a series, right?).
I agree that it kind of wraps up really quickly, but then it also was a little slow for a bit so maybe that contributed to the feeling of it going so fast in the end.
And this is somewhat spoiler-y but...
I have a really hard time swallowing that a super religious dude like Nicholas would be down with the sexing so fast and with little reservation. Not very believable.
I agree that it kind of wraps up really quickly, but then it also was a little slow for a bit so maybe that contributed to the feeling of it going so fast in the end.
And this is somewhat spoiler-y but...
I have a really hard time swallowing that a super religious dude like Nicholas would be down with the sexing so fast and with little reservation. Not very believable.
6/10
I loved the concept of this book, and I really thought in the beginning I was going to super enjoy it.
Unfortunately, it all too quickly turned into a lackluster love story between a religious zealot and a somewhat bratty 19 year old immortal. And while it was easy and pleasant to read, for the most part, I just wasn’t feeling it.
There really just aren’t words for how little i cared about Nicholas’s penis.
That said, the concept was interesting enough that I still found some enjoyment in reading.
I loved the concept of this book, and I really thought in the beginning I was going to super enjoy it.
Unfortunately, it all too quickly turned into a lackluster love story between a religious zealot and a somewhat bratty 19 year old immortal. And while it was easy and pleasant to read, for the most part, I just wasn’t feeling it.
There really just aren’t words for how little i cared about Nicholas’s penis.
That said, the concept was interesting enough that I still found some enjoyment in reading.