Kage Baker... finally

[cahn]

Raced through In the Garden of Iden. This is, I feel, mostly the fault of joyce, with a liberal helping of ase. Well, I did like it quite a lot, and I'll definitely be picking up the rest of the series. Mendoza is a lot of fun!

It spoke directly to a lot of things that make me happy. I like snark. I also like examining paradoxes of time travel, sometimes (though it didn't work for me in Time Traveler's Wife... mostly because there was less examination and more resignation, I suspect) (Heroes, though I love Hiro, is driving me crazy right now-- I'm mostly through season 1-- what with the traveling blithely through time without examining it at ALL). I really, really like HenryVIII/Mary/Elizabeth-an England. Really. I really like thoughtful examination of religion. (Obviously given my background I prefer positive thoughtful examination, but negative is okay too as long as it's thoughtful and nominally balanced, which I thought this was.)

What was up with Mendoza saying in the first chapter that the Company recruited people in the appropriate times so that they would be acclimatized to the time... and then proceeding to whine about not being acclimatized to the food, people, lack of showers, etc. the entire rest of the book? That kind of distracted me, especially since as far as I can tell she's supposed to be a reliable narrator. Also, the fact that she spoke in twentieth-century, like, slang, most of the time also distracted me, as I found it sort of unbelievable-- I'd expect her natural voice to be either sixteenth century, twenty-fourth century, or some more timeless "literary" voice in between (that is, I reckon literary writing style hasn't changed nearly as much in the last 200 years as colloquial speaking has).

I realized, too, that it took me so long to pick them up because this book is impossible to describe-- D was like, what are you reading? and I was all, "Time-traveling cyborgs!... No, wait! it's not like it sounds..."

Comments

[joyce.livejournal.com]

Hee. I chalked most of the whining up to her being a teenager. :)

And yea, every time I try to tell people what the books are about, it needs a 20 minutes spiel. :) I'm glad you liked it, though. The narrator for the next book is Joseph, and hearing things from his voice is entertaining.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

hee, that's a good point.

Um, yeah, so I've started Sky Coyote. (The third book is checked out by someoen else right now, so I won't be maintaining this frenetic pace for long :) ) I really liked Joseph (I actually thought that he was more sympathetic in Garden than Mendoza, who seemed bound and determined to explore the range of teenage angst to its utmost) so I'm liking it, although predictably I don't find the American milieu as interesting as the English one, but that's not her fault :)

[joyce.livejournal.com]

I liked Sky Coyote. :) From what I've read online, folks think it's skippable, but I think you need to read it to get that Joseph voice planted in your head. It gives context to what happens later... and more than that, I won't babble about, because I hate spoilers (read faster ;) ).

The third book bounces back to Mendoza for its narration (still full of angst, oh boy howdy. But the book also introduces some secondary characters that I really liked - I'm especially fond of Porfirio.)

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

So, how evil would it be to skip the third book and come back to it later? I think the library has all the rest. Oh gosh, I hope this doesn't mean someone else is reading them in order and that I have to be bound by their schedule.

I must confess that I skimmed some of the Coyote sections to get to the juicy flashback bits, which I'm liking quite a bit better.

[joyce.livejournal.com]

Sorry, you need to read the third one in order. :) I'm a completist, but I'm not just saying that... you find out some stuff about Mendoza that becomes important later on, you meet someone who becomes Very Important later, and important things happen to Mendoza.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Glad to know you liked Garden. Sky Coyote may be my favorite in the series, since it's all Joseph all the time. He's so delightfully sneaky. The series isn't deep, but it's very fun.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

He's so delightfully sneaky.

Yes! I think Joseph is my favorite character. So far, anyway.

The series isn't deep, but it's very fun.

It's perfect reading for me right now! (I may have to save Cyteen, for instance, for a less mind-candy-wanting time.) They remind me a bit of Brust's Taltos books, in general tone and large-scale-conspiracy-arc atmosphere, though Brust has certainly got more of the twisty mystery-plot vibe.