More Company Novels!

By -
The Life of the World to Come, by Kage Baker
The Children of the Company
The Machine's Child
Gods and Pawns
The Sons of Heaven

Phew, I have read a whole lot of Company novels!  I'm a little tired, so I think I won't read the last two I have--The Empress of Mars and Not Less Than Gods--for a little while. 

Still not very good covers.
The only problem with talking about these books is that the plot gets so complex and out-there that it becomes hard to describe to anyone who hasn't already read some of them.  I'll just do my best here...

The Life of the World to Come: the life story of Alec Checkerfield, Seventh Earl of Finsbury, ridiculously wealthy 24th-century playboy.  But Alec is an unusual little boy, with some odd talents, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Mendoza's two former loves...

The Children of the Company: meet Executive Facilitator Labienus, one of the most powerful immortals in Dr. Zeus.  Over the centuries, he has put together his very own empire of power within the Company, and here he looks over some of his old dossiers, which will fill us in on some of the story, and makes plans for when the Silence falls in 2355.

The Machine's Child: Mendoza was long ago sentenced to a time prison, and after that she just disappeared.  Alec Checkerfield plans to take down the Company (and he's got Nicholas and Edward to help or hinder him now), and when he finds Mendoza, he also finds one of Dr. Zeus' most horrific secrets.

What is this spaceship thing?
Gods and Pawns: several short stories, involving Lewis, Mendoza, Porfirio, and one of the Company's early tragic failures in the process to figure out immortality.

The Sons of Heaven: by now we're jumping back and forth in time like mad, as various factions (I count five, no wait six) plot and plan for the Silence and we just try to hang on and keep up. 

This is a great series--full of great ideas and characters, funny and tragic and weird--and it's well worth reading if you can find the books.  They're out of print at the moment, but available on Kindle.


Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 13, 2016 at 6:43 PM

    THIS SERIES. I wish more people knew about it! A lovely woman who used to leave the nicest and thoughtfulest comments all over the blogosphere, though she rarely blogged herself, once recommended it to me, and it remains one of the most fun reading experiences I've had since I started blogging. I'd love it if someone put these books back in print. With better covers. I'd buy them all in hardback and scream about them to all my bloggy friends.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kristen M.June 14, 2016 at 8:00 AM

    I actually just bought The Life of the World to Come yesterday so that I can read Mendoza in Hollywood now without worrying that I would only have one book left after it! It really is WAY too hard to find these books. I also bought another Kage Baker, The Hotel Under the Sand, which looks really fun!

    ReplyDelete
  3. KerryJune 20, 2016 at 2:11 AM

    If you're interested, Stefan Raets is doing a readalong of the Company series over on Tor.com at the moment. we're just about to start Sky Coyote. There is some good discussion and the most recent post was from Kage Baker's sister, talking about the writing of In the Garden of Iden.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JeanJune 20, 2016 at 4:43 PM

    Thanks for the tip, Kerry!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more