5 comments about In the Garden of Iden: A Novel of the Company.

1. In this first novel of the Company series by Kage Baker, we see the inception of young Mendoza, a poor spanish children saved from the maws of Spanish Inquisition, as a temporal cyborg in the Company of Dr Zeus. Inc. We follow her in her first mission with Joseph, her inceptor, and young Latif, in England, under the sway of Her Catholic Majesty Bloody Mary Tudor. They are to visit the Garden of curiosities of Sir walter Iden to retrieve some soon to be extinct botanical and zoological specimens. At sir walter Iden's Mendoza finds her first hopeless love, a stern, roguish protestant called Nicholas Harpole. We see history unfold as the doomed love story between Mendoza and Nicholas reached its most bitter end. As dramatic as it is, this novel is historically sound, with many notations of wry humour. A great first!



2. This review contains slight spoilers.
   
   Wow a book that actually summarizes itself (pg. 239):
   "How could millennia-old superbeings be so boring?" Indeed!
   
   Baker's premise was interesting: an organization of immortals travels back in time to preserve things that they deem preserve-worthy. This includes mortals who they convert into immortal cyborgs to serve as their operatives.
   
   If only she had developed this premise in the book, but no, it turns into a silly historical romance between Mendoza - a supposedly highly trained operative - and a stiff (pun intended) mortal, Nicholas, who sees God in every orgasm. Foul ! - a romance novel masquerading as a Science Fiction work!
   
   It seems that Baker forgot about the science fiction somewhere after the first 5 chapters or so to bore us with an improbable historical romance set in the counter-reformation of 16th century England. The book ends with Mendoza being reassigned to the crumbling Aztec world - oh boy, Baker can perpetuate this by transporting the historical romance to a new location. Please spare me!
   
   From the point where you discover the dumb title pun - most of the book is set at the estate of Walter Iden, with its magnificent gardens - this dull, grind of a book becomes very, very bad. The characters are shallow, never developed enough for the reader to discover, or very much care about, their motivations. The mysterious Company that, more or less it turns out, controls the immortals is never developed at all. We are given no clues about its motivation or purpose, much to the detriment of the story. Another reviewer used the term "dimensionless", which is apt in so many ways.
   
   I found little to like about this book, other than the premise. The characters are thinly drawn, predictable, and one dimensional, creating no emotional attachment for the reader. The flow of the book is inconsistent, it d-r-a-g-s for 200 pages while Mendoza and Nicholas do it in every alcove of the estate and we endure an - admittedly well researched - history of religious conflict in Reformation England, then zips to a denouement where the plot turns too abruptly, the mortals meet their various ends and the operatives move on. Yes, it's as interesting as it sounds. Yawn.... I was surprised to learn that the author is an authority on Elizabethan English as I thought that the dialect was faulty: too many 20th centuryisms seemed to work their way into the dialog.
   
   Alas this book seems to suffer from a malady that afflicts Science Fiction writers today: it was written with sequels in mind, rather than developed into a coherent work of fiction. Can no one in this genre write an engrossing work that is self-contained?
   
   This is a silly, poorly-written romance that wastes an interesting premise. Avoid it; there are better things to read (and so little time)!



3. I picked up this book because of some recommendations from friends on Shelfari. I was greatly disappointed!
   
   This book starts out so well, describing the Company, time travel and immortality and then goes to Spain in the 1500's where a little girl (Mendoza) is rescued from the Inquisition and put in a "special program" with other children. They are trained and receive a number of surgeries that transform them into Cyborgs. The book then goes downhill from there as Mendoza is sent on her task to work in 1500's England during the end of Queen "Bloody" Mary's reign. From there it is painfully dull and very difficult to finish.
   
   What also made this book difficult was that the vast infrastructure that was set up underground in the 1500's is very unbelievable. This book is definately not on my recommended list!



4. To start, this is the first book of a series. Like any series, you will not get the whole story in the first book. The first chapter introduces you to the world of the series, and Mendoza drops dark hints that the Company is not as altruistic as it seems to be. She does not return to this theme again. Rather, that theme is explored in other books in the series. What this book is about is Mendoza's first, disastrous assignment. It is a character story more than a plot-driven story. At its heart, it is both a love story, and a cautionary tale of fanatical religious devotion, set appropriately against the fanatically devout reign of Bloody Mary. Most of the book is extremely well-written.
   
   The beginning chapters detail the Company and Mendoza's recruitment. She gets rescued from the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition and goes through the immortality process. This part of the book is utterly riveting. She goes on her first assignment and meets her new teammates. Things start to slow down a bit, but it's still very well-written and is full of gorgeous details. Her team arrives at the Garden of Iden, where her job is to catalogue all of the plants there, because in the future many of these plants will be extinct. She also meets The Guy.
   
   And things come to a screeching halt. This is where I knocked my review down a star, because for the next hundred to two hundred pages, there is a lot of crawling around among the plants, and a lot of witty exchanges and lovey-dovey scenes between Mendoza and The Guy, and the occasional dropped hint that all of this will end in sorrow, but most of the bigger, interesting incidents that happen in this section seem to be filler, with very few serving to advance the plot. Baker's problem is that she sets up Mendoza as needing to study the plants for a full year in order for future scientists to accurately recreate them. That is a very long time frame to have to fill, and only rarely does Baker say anything like, "What with one thing and another, time passed."
   
   Towards the end, things pick up again. The ending left me with a lot of questions about the Company that I wanted answered. Hopefully, Baker will answer them in further books in the series.



5. The time travel and life extension premise is great, but she doesn't do much with it. The rest of the book is full of sarcastic and irritating characters who really are not likeable that reads like a television sitcom. Once I realized I wasn't going to get a satisfying sci-fi experience and lowered my expectations to rock bottom, it was readable in a tawdry way. I might try another one though as the second novel is purportedly much better.

1 comments about Blue Guide Churches and Chapels Southern England (Blue Guide Churches and Chapels: Southern England).

1. Much like other Blue Guides, this book provides extremely detailed descriptions of, in this case, churches of Southern England. Every carving, window and work of art is discussed in great detail.
   Unfortunately, like most other blue guides, pictures are almost nonexistant. So it's a great book for people visiting churches who want to know the background of what they are viewing, but less satisfying for the armchair traveller.

No comments about Pembrokeshire Coast Path (National Trail Guides).

No comments about Footprint England Handbook.

2 comments about Life as a Night Porter.

1. Photographer Chris Shaw spent ten years working in London hotels, using his camera to document the hotel's patrons and oddities and keeping himself awake on the late shift. LIFE AS A NIGHT PORTER offers a shelving challenge to libraries; but as an exhibit piece or addition to a serious college-level photography library holding, it can't be beat. Pictures capture the chance meeting and the finer world of hotel life, with large-size, often murky, black and white photos of employees and residents alike capturing and documenting another night world. It's a rich world of the underworld and comes to life in Shaw's presentation.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



2. This is one of my favorite photo books of all time - Chris Shaw shows us the underbelly of 1 and 2 star hotel lobbies, staircases, and hallways during the darkest hours of the day - when unfortunate souls lock themselves out of their rooms nude, guests pass out in the lobby couches, and everything else you could ever imagine happens late at night. All photos are accompanied with Chris' handwriting scrawled around the border of the images. If you like Martin Parr's work, you'll love Chris Shaw's work - they share the same spirit. 3 thumbs up!

No comments about Maine Curiosities, 2nd: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities, and Other Offbeat Stuff (Curiosities Series).

No comments about At the Water's Edge.

No comments about Getaway Guide New England's Best: Lodging - Dining - Attractions.

No comments about Weekend Journeys: 52 Trips : A Destination for Every Weekend of the Year.

1 comments about The Mountain Biker's Guide to Ski Resorts: Where to Ride Downhill in New York, New England, and Eastern Canada (Bicycling).

1. Ever since the mountain bike was invented two decades ago, fat tire aficionados have dreamed of an endless summer of endless downhill riding.

   Two years ago, Robert M. Immler, a Vermont freelance writer and mountain bike enthusiast, pursued this dream, spending the summer bombing down Alpine slopes on his Specialized Rockhopper at 20 downhill ski resorts in the Northeast that cater to cyclists.

   Immler wrote up his findings and distilled his experiences and observations in a book published this month. "The Mountain Biker's Guide to Ski Resorts is a long awaited compendium of downhill riding in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York and Quebec.

   This enticing volume deserves a place on he bookshelf of any serious mountain biker, and rates a read even by armchair adventurers who've only dreamed of hanging their wheels on a ski lift and riding into the clouds.

   The guide is easy to read, close to comprehensive in scope and excruciatingly thorough in attention to any details. Although the book's principal strengths in the area by area information, much of its appeal lies in the opportunities it offers for planning a fat-tire vacation this summer.

   There are only two major faults. Despite its title, the guide's scope is strictly limited to downhill ski areas and omits much fine off-road cycling available at cross-country centers.

   The second is really beyond the author's control: the ski-cum-cycle market is changing so quickly that several of the book's 20 detailed chapters - averaging nine pages per ski resort - will be seriously out-of-date by this summer.

   Some high points:

   In addition to hours, opening dates and costs, each chapter includes several suggested itineraries with best viewpoints, difficulty ratings, explicit directions and distances computed to hundredths of a mile.

   Other information for each resort includes rentals, bike shops, major cycling events and related attractions - such as water slides to cool off sweaty cyclists.

   Added information includes daycare facilities, on-mountain restaurants and even places to wash off mud-encrusted bikes. Secondary info directs vacationers to nearby accommodations, campgrounds, restaurants and nightlife.

   Only a handful of ski mountains provide lift service directly to the summit. Because most high elevation expert ski slopes are too steep and rocky for cyclists to handle, most resorts carry bikes only mid-mountain lifts.

   Vermont's 4,211 foot Killington Peak, is the highest lift-served summit in the Northeast. Other ski mountains with lift service to the to include Loon in New Hampshire and Jay, Stratton and Snow in Vermont.

   Several mounts operate an off-mountain shuttle service for cyclists. Among the most appealing is Loon's bike van, which carries riders to the height-of-land of Franconia Notch and allows them to cruise downhill along the famed Franconia Recreation Path.

   Along this graded, paved off-road path, riders can visit sites and sights such as the Old Man of the Mountain, Profile Lake, the Flume and the Basin. Before returning to Loon's cycle center, riders pass half a dozen ice cream shops in Lincoln.

   Before visiting any ski mountain, call ahead. Because of the changes in the ski industry, much of this book will be out of date this summer. Here are some notable updates:

   Add Sugarloaf to the lift-served list this season, while Shawnee Peak started serving cyclists last summer. In New Hampshire, add Attitash Bear Peak and delete Bretton Woods and Cranmore.

   Scott Andrews