In the Garden of Iden
Apr. 28th, 2010 21:25![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyBaker, Kage. In the Garden of Iden. New York: Harcourt, 1997.
I think Mendoza is even more sarcastic than I am, which is really saying something.
This is the first of the late Kage Baker's novels of The Company, a mysterious 24th-century outfit which discovered backwards-only time travel as well as functional immortality and combined them to create an entire workforce of operatives stranded in time, working to find and preserve anything and everything the 24th century could want from the ravages of time and humanity until they finally age forward into the terrestrial paradise. Mendoza is a young Catholic girl in early 16th century Spain saved from the clutches of the Inquisition by Company operative Joseph; fifteen years later she and Joseph undertake a mission to England in 1553, to find and preserve a certain rare species of holly that grows in aged knight Sir William Iden's garden.
With the device of The Company, Baker found the perfect get-out-of-jail-free card against charges of anachronism: Mendoza and all her fellow operatives get all the entertainment in history delivered to them in the field, with the result that everyone is a movie buff and cracks Casablanca jokes in the 1550s; the operatives even hear the latest news from Radio Tudor and similar Company stations broadcasting in real time, though of course they know already how it's all going to end. So even while she is a child of her time, Mendoza transcends it, to the point where she actively loathes the mortals by whom she is surrounded. Naturally as the botanist on the team she is forced to interact with them frequently, and with one young Anabaptist turned secretary, Nicholas, in particular. Naturally, she and Nicholas fall madly in love. Emphasis, in the end, on the "madly;" the book turns harrowing in the final act.
It's interesting to read a book set just before the dawn of the Elizabethan age, in the neglected reign of Bloody Mary; there are interesting notes about religion (Mendoza is not quite sure whether she was born a crypto-Jew or not) throughout the book as well. But what sets Mendoza apart is her sarcasm and her utter cynicism about both her job and about human history, both of which are redeemed by her humor. Baker manages to slip some fairly cutting points regarding the same in under the reader's guard; you don't know you've been hit until she twists the knife. In the following passage Joseph is excoriating Mendoza on the perils of trying to influence Nicholas' choices:
As they say, damn, man, that's pretty cold.
Sff certainly lost a talent when Baker died of cancer earlier this year. At least there are quite a few more Company novels that I still haven't read.
I think Mendoza is even more sarcastic than I am, which is really saying something.
This is the first of the late Kage Baker's novels of The Company, a mysterious 24th-century outfit which discovered backwards-only time travel as well as functional immortality and combined them to create an entire workforce of operatives stranded in time, working to find and preserve anything and everything the 24th century could want from the ravages of time and humanity until they finally age forward into the terrestrial paradise. Mendoza is a young Catholic girl in early 16th century Spain saved from the clutches of the Inquisition by Company operative Joseph; fifteen years later she and Joseph undertake a mission to England in 1553, to find and preserve a certain rare species of holly that grows in aged knight Sir William Iden's garden.
With the device of The Company, Baker found the perfect get-out-of-jail-free card against charges of anachronism: Mendoza and all her fellow operatives get all the entertainment in history delivered to them in the field, with the result that everyone is a movie buff and cracks Casablanca jokes in the 1550s; the operatives even hear the latest news from Radio Tudor and similar Company stations broadcasting in real time, though of course they know already how it's all going to end. So even while she is a child of her time, Mendoza transcends it, to the point where she actively loathes the mortals by whom she is surrounded. Naturally as the botanist on the team she is forced to interact with them frequently, and with one young Anabaptist turned secretary, Nicholas, in particular. Naturally, she and Nicholas fall madly in love. Emphasis, in the end, on the "madly;" the book turns harrowing in the final act.
It's interesting to read a book set just before the dawn of the Elizabethan age, in the neglected reign of Bloody Mary; there are interesting notes about religion (Mendoza is not quite sure whether she was born a crypto-Jew or not) throughout the book as well. But what sets Mendoza apart is her sarcasm and her utter cynicism about both her job and about human history, both of which are redeemed by her humor. Baker manages to slip some fairly cutting points regarding the same in under the reader's guard; you don't know you've been hit until she twists the knife. In the following passage Joseph is excoriating Mendoza on the perils of trying to influence Nicholas' choices:
"Did he? Are you going to make his choices for him? That's a violation of his natural rights, kiddo. Don't forget that mortals have free will. They traded their Paradise for it, and they can jump into manure up to their necks if they choose to. We don't care. We're not here to make them happy, we're not here to make them prosperous, we're not here to help them on the road to self-realization. We're here to do business for the Company."
As they say, damn, man, that's pretty cold.
Sff certainly lost a talent when Baker died of cancer earlier this year. At least there are quite a few more Company novels that I still haven't read.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 03:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 03:47 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 03:59 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 04:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 02:14 (UTC)*winces* It's true that Mary was not exactly an example of religious toleration, but then neither were her father Henry VIII or her sister Elizabeth I, or indeed other contemporary rulers. But it's Mary who gets the rap as EVIL, because English history was, until recently, almost inevitably written within a tradition that saw the Protestant Reformation as (a) a religious improvement and (b) a step on the beautiful Whiggish path to parliamentary democracy and freedom. So it terribly, terribly wicked of Mary to burn Protestants, but quite okay for Henry to burn, hang-draw-and-quarter, or occasionally behead Catholics, or for Elizabeth to have them pressed to death between massive stones.
One of the reasons I didn't care for In the Garden of Iden very much was its fairly unquestioning acceptance of this narrative.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 02:31 (UTC)Yeah, that's the other thing I didn't quite get around to saying when I talked about Baker's free pass on anachronism--she lets Mendoza's privileged position as someone who lived through the era absolve her, the author, of any attempt at going against the standard narratives, not just about England but about Spain and also Old Mexico, too.
Mary has such a horrible reputation, it's ridiculous.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 19:04 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 22:20 (UTC)