The Women of Nell Gwynne's

My review of Kage Baker's The Women of Nell Gwynne's is up at the Sacramento Book Review.

Excellent novella.

Check out the review.


Edit: I should note that this review was written and submitted in late December and that the time from submission to publication is normal for online reviews at SBR. At the time I wrote this I was genuinely hopeful we would have the opportunity to see more Nell Gwynne's stories (there is a new one at Subterranean Online).

Kage Baker passed away on January 31. Until her final weeks, Kage kept her health from being a public matter.

This is to say that I apologize if the close of my review comes across as uncaring or ignorant. Neither was intended.

I also do not intend any slight to be given to SBR regarding the timing of the review's posting. The lead time for publication was typical and appropriate. It's just an unfortunate circumstance that a review hoping for more fiction from Kage was posted two short weeks after she passed.

World Fantasy Award Nominee: "Caverns of Mystery"

"Caverns of Mystery"
Kage Baker
Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy
Subterranean Press: 2008
Nominated for the World Fantasy Award: Best Short Story

"Caverns of Mystery" is one of Kage Baker's two World Fantasy Award nominated fictions (the other is her novel The House of the Stag), and frankly, I'm not sure the story is worth the nomination. Let me back up.

This is a quiet story told from the limited third person perspective of an unnamed girl (unless I missed it). The girl's parents have rented a cottage by the sea for a family vacation. This is important for the titular caverns of mystery, but equally important is that the girl sees "phantoms" which nobody else can see.

A thing crawled up out of a creekbed, a skinwalker with a coyote's head, and it turned to watch as the station wagon approached. Meeting her gaze, it leaped at the door; she pulled her glasses off and covered her right eye as it clawed at the window. She turned her face away, refusing to see it.

There is a certain amount of question as to what, if anything the phantoms can do. Another phantom, a pirate, "smiled at her, tenderly". Some seem to be harmless, but the girl is concerned when they seem angry.

"Caverns of Mystery" involves stories and local folklore, a small tourist-trap of a cavern, over-protective parents, and the sort of friendship that can only happen while vacationing away from home.

The story features Baker's usual quietly graceful writing. Seldom is Baker ever flashy in her storytelling, but "Caverns of Mystery" fails to deliver...well, mystery, or wonder, or anything to compel readers to want to commit to the story. Obviously that statement cannot be entirely true given the World Fantasy Award nomination, but "Caverns of Mystery" isn't even the best story in Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy, let alone one of the best five fantasy stories of 2008.

The struggle here is how to articulate this. "Caverns of Mystery" isn't bad, it's just ordinary. It's the sort of story that if I wasn't trying to talk about the World Fantasy Award nominations, or of it was not nominated (which it shouldn't have been), I would never have mentioned the story at all. It's just a story. Competent. Well written. Ordinary. Slightly boring.

The Life of the World to Come, by Kage Baker

This is the first time I have truly been disappointed with one of Kage Baker’s Company novels. At first I thought my disappointment had to do with the fact that the novel opens with Mendoza in exile 150,000 years in the past and after that opening she only shows up once for a short chapter. I am a fan of Mendoza. But, then I realized that what I liked about Sky Coyote had little to do with Mendoza, and The Graveyard Game was entirely absent of Mendoza. While I would have appreciated more of Mendoza in The Life of the World to Come, her appearance in the novel is not required.

What was it, then?

Alec Checkerfield.

I pretty much can’t stand the character of Alec Checkerfield. His first appearance in the novel is a chapter titled “Smart Alec”, which was a story in Baker’s Black Project, White Knights collection (my other Company disappointment). The Life of the World to Come seems to alternate chapters with some Company operatives a few years before The Silence, and with Checkerfield. Unfortunately, we get Alec Checkerfield chapters dealing with Alec at various ages. Yeah, it gives the reader a full and complete background of Checkerfield, but I’ve got to tell you – it sucked. Unfortunately, Checkerfield is the spitting image of both Edward and Nicholas, the two previous loves of Mendoza, and this means Checkerfield is about to become integral to the remainder of the series.

God help me. I love this series, but have a borderline literary hate for Alec Checkerfield.

The one real plus to this novel, besides the couple of brief Mendoza interludes, was the Company scientist chapters when we got a glimpse of them manipulating things in history and when we discover the whys and hows of Alec / Edward / Nicholas.

And then things get just stupid when we get the 23rd Century Alec pulling multiple personalities with both Edward and Nicholas.

I’m reading a series with immortal cyborgs who love twentieth century movies, time travel, and a company that snatches artifacts from the past for future profit. I can buy into a whole lot of stuff. But that multiple personality thing...Baker damn near lost me there.

I sincerely hope that The Children of the Company is better and that Alec is somehow less obnoxious a character, because The Life of the World to Come was rough going.

Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key, by Kage Baker

Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key
Kage Baker
Subterranean Press: 2008

Taking a step away from the Company, Kage Baker takes a crack at a pirate novel and gives us her spin on piracy and a quest for buried treasure. Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key is a short novel rife with adventure, mystery, the supernatural, piracy, a damsel who may or may not be in distress, and the search for hidden treasure. The only thing missing is a treasure map with a big X on it.

John James is ready to leave a life of piracy behind. After risking his life and seeing friends killed he returns home with only 50 pounds. He wants to set up a blacksmith’s shop and the 50 pounds will be just enough, but he first must give a lady a letter from her now dead beau, his now dead friend. Rather than being the end of John’s adventures, this is the beginning to the next for the letter contains instructions on how to find a great deal of money he had buried. Mrs. Waverly offers to split the money with John if he will only help her.

What follows is a lean, fast paced story where each chapter brings the reader something new. Baker deftly advances the story while giving us greater details about the characters, a bit of romance and mystery, a bit of the supernatural, a bit of piracy and high adventure on the seas, and a bit of everything I might wish from a slim pirate novel.

Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key shows off Kage Baker’s range. She isn’t all about The Company (as great as that series is), and that while this novel is a bit of a period piece (set pre-Civil War), it moves as deftly as any modern tale of adventure. The simple path from A to B is not taken and Baker throws new perils and detours into the path of John James and the lady. I hesitate to use the word “rollicking”, but at times Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key does, indeed, rollick.


Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key will be published in April 2008

Reading Copy provided courtesy of Subterranean Press

Quick Takes: Elizabeth Bear, Kage Baker, George R. R. Martin

New Amsterdam, by Elizabeth Bear: New Amsterdam is something of a mosaic novel. Bear links several stories together so that each story builds where the previous one left off and enriches the overall experience, but each story is complete itself. Together, the stories of New Amsterdam feel more like chapters than separate entities. New Amsterdam opens in the late 1800’s with a story of a man making his way via dirigible from the old world of Europe to the new world of America, only this is an America which is still an English colony, where New York is still New Amsterdam, and magic and vampires are real. The choicest detail I found was that magic was as much a science as anything else and a character is a noted ThD (Doctor of Thaumoturgy). There is a formality to the language, or the storytelling, as if Bear was placing the novel in a tradition of a late 1800’s story. This is difficult for me to explain, but a feeling I had. Meanwhile we are introduced to the vampire and private detective Sebastian, and to the Crown Investigator Irene Garrett. Together they make a fascinating pair as they investigate various supernatural crimes with ties to the local government of New Amsterdam (initially). New Amsterdam required a bit more work to read than the average Elizabeth Bear novel (not that Bear’s novels are even remotely average), but this is due to the formality of the prose rather than the content of the stories. Interesting distinction, and while I would like to read more about Sebastian and Irene Garret, I think I would rather read about them on a per story basis, rather than a book.



Black Projects, White Knights, by Kage Baker: As much as I loved the four Company novels I have read from Kage Baker, and as high as my expectations were going into this collection of Company short stories, I was disappointed. Familiar faces flitted in and out of the stories, from Joseph and Lewis, to Kalugin, to Mendoza. Perhaps because these stories were tied to the Company milieu I expected Baker’s Company short fiction to expand our understanding of the characters, their situations, and the overall landscape. Outside of the Alec Checkerfield stories, I do not believe the stories did so (though the story of Lewis excavating a tomb was superb). I suspect that what I brought to the stories is what hampered my enjoyment of them. I was unable to read the stories as discrete piece of fiction, and because of the inherent tie to The Company, most disappointed. I am quite sure that some feel Baker’s Company short fiction is superior to her novels, but based on this first collection I cannot agree.



Wild Cards: Jokers Wild, by George R. R. Martin (editor): This third entry of the Wild Cards series brings the final showdown of Fortunado, Dr. Tachyon, and The Astromoner. Like the previous two volumes Jokers Wild is a mosaic novel. Unlike the previous two volumes Jokers Wild is a straight out novel rather than a series of interlocking short stories. Jokers Wild is still written by a team of writers and edited by George R. R. Martin, but there is a greater flow to the story here because there is one main storyline running through the entire novel rather than having various short stories jump around. This has made Jokers Wild a stronger work than the first two and a far smoother reading experience. Here we get to follow particular characters over the course of the novel and while it is difficult to remember who some characters who were only referenced earlier are, the characters who take center stage here really get to shine. In particular, that woman (Jennifer) who can phase through solid matter, and Spector (the one who can bring death by looking in your eyes) especially stand out. The main selling point of the Wild Cards series (besides the talent involved) is that this is a superhero story where the heroes are real people with real problems and the same varying shades of morality that the rest of humanity has. It is also interesting seeing the changes wrought after the Wild Cards virus was loosed.

Quick Takes: Julia Peterkin, Kage Baker, Charles Wheelan

Scarlet Sister Mary, by Julia Peterkin: It has been a while, but Scarlet Sister Mary is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that I was able to finish. I felt the need to check on the author because the novel is set on a South Carolina plantation after the end of slavery and is told entirely from the perspective from the children of former slaves and I was surprised to learn that the author was white, but writing in the dialect of the former slaves and plantation workers. But, the author’s husband owned a post-Civil War plantation so I imagine Peterkin knew what she was writing about. The novel follows Mary, an initially young woman who marries perhaps the wrong brother, she gets pregnant, he leaves her, and over the course of decades we see her life in town, being accepted and shunned by the church, having a variety of children from a variety of men and just overall Mary’s experience. Scarlet Sister Mary is very readable and has a solid flow to the storytelling. I’m not sure it is better than anything else being published at the time and I can’t see it winning now, but I have struggled through the other Pulitzer winners from the 1920’s so I can’t complain too much. Interesting tidbit about the book is that the head of the Pulitzer board wanted another novel to win the Pulitzer for the Novel and resigned in protest when the rest of the board awarded Scarlet Sister Mary the Prize. Drama!



The Graveyard Game, by Kage Baker: The first three Company novels were complete stories set in one location and time and told a story outside of the tidbits left about Company future history and the theories of the cyborgs. But at the end of the previous novel, Mendoza in Hollywood, the botanist Mendoza was exile more than a hundred thousand years into the past for the crime of murdering humans and perhaps also for being a Crome Generator (this will make sense if you read the novels). The Graveyard Game is the fourth Company novel and it features Joseph and Lewis over several centuries as they search for clues as to the whereabouts of Mendoza and of the other Company agents who have disappeared over the years and together (and apart) they discover startling information regarding the Company and about the Silence of 2355. The Graveyard Game is less a straight narrative as it is bits and pieces over the years and putting things together and just revealing more information about The Company as the previous three novels did combined. In a sense The Graveyard Game is like one of the mythology episodes from The X-Files. There is a lot of Company information packed into The Graveyard Game and while I think this hurts the novel as a “novel”, I was enthralled and wanted to learn more about The Company and The Silence and the conspiracies surrounding The Company. Kage Baker’s Company novels are fantastic and I can’t wait to read the first collection of Company stories Black Projects, White Knights.



Naked Economics, by Charles Wheelan: So, we have a Pulitzer winner, some science fiction from Kage Baker, and...a book on economics. Charles Wheelan breaks economics down to its simplest concepts, does not use any charts or graphs, explains things in terms that anyone can understand, uses real world examples, and essentially makes economics interesting to me. Looking back there are still quite a few concepts I may have a difficult time remembering or grasping, but Naked Economics puts difficult concepts into plain language and should be used as a primer for anyone interested in the subject but does not want to get into the nuts and bolts. Someone who wants as simple an explanation that can be given will find it here.

Mendoza in Hollywood, by Kage Baker

Mendoza in Hollywood
Kage Baker
2000



Mendoza in Hollywood is Kage Baker’s third novel about the Company operatives tasked to preserve missing historical artifacts and planet and animal life which would otherwise become extinct. The operatives work for the Dr. Zeus Company and due to the scientific discoveries of the 24th Century, the operatives are once human, but now immortal cyborgs. Baker’s first Company novel, In the Garden of Iden, introduced us to both The Company and to Mendoza, a Spanish child saved from the Inquisition and made more and less than human to work for The Company as a Botanist. In that first novel she fell in love with a mortal man but had to watch him die because the Company could not and would not intervene. She grew bitter and disillusioned and betrayed and spent centuries working alone in the California wilderness during the 1700’s. Now, during the 1860’s, Mendoza is assigned to the region which would eventually develop into Hollywood. California in the 1860’s was a rough place, but Mendoza is not alone. She joins a crew of operatives with their own tasks of recording the culture of the region, taking samples of the local fauna, and a variety of other jobs to do for The Company.

When Mendoza in Hollywood opens, however, Mendoza is narrating her story to Company interrogators. We learn early that Mendoza has killed several mortals, which is an absolute taboo for The Company. Mendoza in Hollywood is narrated by Mendoza in captivity as an explanation for how she got to the point where she would and could kill mortals and why she did so. This is hanging over every part of the novel, that at some point Mendoza may snap and kill and we don’t know why. Mendoza is upset about the new assignment, but she also seems to enjoy the company of her fellow operatives.

Kage Baker takes us on a journey through the Hollywood wilderness before it became Hollywood. Because of the nature of the Immortals, Baker is able to reference hundreds of years of Hollywood history, some of which we know and some of which has not happened yet. There are screenings of classic movies, and a tour of the future homes of celebrities. But, Mendoza in Hollywood is also the story of a very emotionally broken Immortal. Mendoza has accepted the death of Nicholas, but hundreds of years later she still has not gotten over it. It changed her irrevocably.

With each novel Kage Baker tells a very different story. In the Garden of Iden was partly a Victorian romance, Sky Coyote was a classic trickster tale of indigenous culture. Mendoza in Hollywood is a western complete with bandits and prostitutes. With each novel Kage Baker develops what we know and suspect of The Company. There are further more references to that mysterious year in the future where there is no further information coming from The Company and speculation as to what that means (though less speculation than in Sky Coyote). There are little tidbits that build the reader’s understanding and sense of wonderment about the greater world of the future even as the characters are slowly making their way through the past.

The Company novels have improved steadily with each new entry. Mendoza in Hollywood is a stronger piece of fiction and storytelling than either In the Garden of Iden or Sky Coyote was, and Sky Coyote was an entertaining story indeed. Finishing Mendoza in Hollywood serves to whet my appetite for the next Company novel The Graveyard Game.



Thinking about the conclusion of Mendoza in Hollywood makes me question something of the nature of time travel in regards to The Company novels. Since time travel requires that a person can only move backwards in time and forward only up to the original departure time, what happens if an operative is working in one time period (A) and is subsequently sent back farther in time (B)? If said operative is not moved from the time period he or she is sent to (B) would not said operative from (B) eventually co-exist at the same time as the operative was originally in (A)?

That may not have made sense.

Let me try again. I was born in 1979 and in 2007 I am a Company operative working to preserve the great novels lost to history. After I preserve the works of Matthew Stover (for example) I am sent back to 1712 to do something literary. Now, I already existed between 1979 and 2007 otherwise I could not have been sent back in time to 1712. I’m immortal, so I’ll live forever. If nothing else changes I will live from 1712 back to 1979-2007. Because I had to exist in 1979 in the first place (otherwise this is all moot) starting in 1979 there has to be two of me existing at the same time: the me born in 1979 and the me that was sent back in time.

So how does that work? Obviously the me born in 1979 will do whatever I did until 2007 when I was sent back in time...but isn’t there a potential paradox or conflict with two of me existing at the same time? I know Back to the Future solves this by having the time traveling Marty / Doc not reveal himself to the past Marty / Doc, but wouldn’t that still cause an issue if I wanted to check in on myself in high school or elementary school? Or is the problem solved by the fact that had the older Joe actually interfered in young Joe’s life I would have remembered it because it had happened and changed nothing because it had to happen?

And my head just exploded.

Kage Baker Pirate Novel

Ooh!

Subterranean Press is proud to present an exclusive pirate novel by the author of the acclaimed "Company" series.

His name is John James--at least, that's the name he gives to anyone asking. He's a former pirate just back in Port Royal from the sack of Panama, and he has every intention of settling down and leading a respectable life. First, though, he must honor a promise and deliver a letter to the mistress of one of his dead comrades.

But the lady is much more than she seems, and the letter turns out to contain detailed instructions for recovering a hidden fortune. It's one thing to know where treasure may be found; finding it, and keeping it, is quite another. On his quest for a prince's ransom John is joined by two unlikely allies: a black freedman named Sejanus Walker and a humble clerk named Winthrop Tudeley. Pirate attacks, hurricanes, shipwrecks, sharks, unearthly visitations and double-crosses follow. Especially double-crosses...

Her "Company" novels are outstanding. She is a frequent contributor to Asimov’s.

I'm in. Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key.

Sky Coyote, by Kage Baker

Sky Coyote
Kage Baker
1999


Kage Baker followed her debut In the Garden of Iden with the highly entertaining Sky Coyote. Both In the Garden of Iden and Sky Coyote are novels of The Company. The Company is an organization from the 24th Century which has discovered both the secrets of both time travel and immortality. Immortality, however, comes at a price. The procedure is too dangerous for adults and can only be performed on human children, and doing so makes them cyborgs, as robotic as they are human. The scientists who discovered the secrets of immortality are unable to reap the benefits themselves. Time Travel has its own catch: A person can only go into the past and then back to the "present day" they left. The cost is exorbitant. One other thing: Recorded history cannot be changed. The Company operatives work in the grey areas between the recorded events of history. They take samples of extinct plants and animals, record the lost cultures of the world, and in some cases remove individuals from the past for further study. At the same time they amass a great fortune for The Company as they recover the "Lost Treasures" of history, be it art or artifacts.

In the Garden of Iden introduced us to Mendoza, a young girl taken by The Company during the Spanish Inquisition, trained up, and given a job to do. Sky Coyote is set several generations after the events of In the Garden of Iden but focuses more on Joseph, the Company operative who recruited Mendoza. Joseph is sent to Old California to live as one of the gods of the Chumash, their Sky Coyote. He is to prepare one village of the Chumash to be preserved by the Company. The Chumash will be all killed by the Spanish in a generation or two and all that will be left is the empty pueblo villages.

The great surprise and fun of Sky Coyote is that the Chumash are not the primitives that Joseph (and the reader) expected. Oh, sure, the Chumash are not technologically advanced, but they are clever and intelligent and nearly as modern in other ways: They have unions, guilds, trade, festivals, culture, capitalism, and they feel like a modern day society with some primitive traditions. The fun of Sky Coyote is watching Joseph interact with the Chumash and be their trickster god.

In the Garden of Iden was an impressive debut for Kage Baker and The Company, but it suffered a bit in pacing of the novel. Sky Coyote surpasses Iden on nearly all levels. Baker is able to mix together the Chumash work with the Company operatives together at their facility and also with Joseph's backstory, as well as a bit of foreshadowing for the future of The Company. Bakers mixes this all together and still forms a coherent and clear narrative with plenty of entertaining banter and a good sense of wonder at both the Chumash as well as The Company. If the rest of The Company novels are up to the level of Sky Coyote, this could be an exceptional fantasy series.

Sky Coyote makes solid improvements upon the foundation of In the Garden of Iden and extends the series and even hints at what the next entry could be. Just as important, there is no need to have read In the Garden of Iden to understand Sky Coyote. Both novels are linked by The Company, but Sky Coyote gives enough intro to what the Company is, and the history between Mendoza and Joseph. Sky Coyote tells its own story independent of Iden. Jump in at either novel and you'll be satisfied. In fact, I would recommend Sky Coyote over Iden as the starting point as Sky Coyote is a better novel.