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Summary: Love in the garden of Iden
Review: More about romance than cyborgs in this book about the activities of an organization, The Company, that works to preserve the past by sending immortal super-cyborgs back in time to collect important art, flora, fauna, etc. Intriguing idea but the reader is only teased with it as a backdrop. Instead, we get a detailed fly-on-the-wall account of the interactions between the narrator/cyborg and her mortal lover. Author also presents interesting ideas about immortal-mortal love and cyborgian views of humanity. That's what you get and it's all very very good (and note that I'm the type of reader who wants blasters, starships and gibbering man-eating aliens with his cyborg stories). Excellent writing, funny, clever, realistic.
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Summary: In The Garden of Iden (Book 1)
Review: This makes for a light, fast read. Probably better suited to a teen than an adult. Its a 'different' take on time travel than the usual. I liked it enough to order Book 2 but hope that there is a bit more substance to it than in Book 1.
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Summary: More romance than SF; more setting than story.
Review: Kage Baker's "In The Garden Of Iden" operates on a fascinating premise wherein humans, enhanced to apparent immortality, roam the past undertaking missions set forth by a somewhat mysterious far future organization. It seems unfortunate, then, that the execution of the story falls well short of its potential. The story is told as a first person narrative, a style which appears to be growing in popularity among modern writers of speculative fiction, but which can be the most difficult fiction to write successfully, for the author's voice becomes so noticeably entangled with that of the narrator. This somewhat minor complaint might be overlooked, but for an additional stylistic trend in the book. Baker appears to do a fine job of depicting 16th century times, customs, clothing and food. The narrator is a young girl/woman, 16th century born but educated and transformed by 24th century means. Yet she seems to narrate frequently in year-1997 slang expressions, which places her neither in the 16th nor 24th century, but in our present, well outside of the story. Such self-conscious parenthetical expressions as "wink wink" in the midst of what might otherwise be effective description can be excessively distracting. Still, these things might be forgotten once caught up in a well paced and engaging story. More misfortune --- the story fails to engage. In fact, one might ask "what story?" Where dramatic tension might arise, nothing occurs. Where characters are bound toward burning suspense, the fire goes out. When characters do become excited, you wonder why. When a fire does erupt near the end, you already know what will happen. There is, in fact, no real sense that the story has anywhere to go, that the characters are really doing anything at all --- which may leave you wondering "so what's the point?" In the end it all seems to be about a young woman's interest in admiring her newfound handsome lover, where much of the time is spent in his arms or between his sheets. It left this reader wondering if this is actually a novel, or just a collection of the author's romantic daydreams supported by a dimensionless cast of fussy and droll characters. From the perspective of the SF enthusiast, you may like this book if you like SF where the truly imaginative elements of the story are given little attention. But you may just as easily find that you regularly wish the author would elaborate at least a little, and not treat potentially fascinating technology and enhanced-human talents as vague afterthoughts. Even so, other reviewers have enjoyed this book. So from this reader's perspective, it may be that you will like this book if you also enjoy: period pieces, still life paintings, string quartets at low volume, Jane Austin and Edith Wharton, and Connie Willis' "To Say Nothing Of The Dog".
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Summary: Fun SF/History novel!
Review: "In The Garden Of Iden" (1997) is the debut novel of science fiction author Kage Barker. It is also the first novel in the "Company" series. The novel introduces Mendoza, an operative of "Dr. Zeus Incorporated", or more commonly: the Company. The Company is an immensely powerful corporation in the 24th century, which preserves works of art and extinct forms of life by recruiting orphans from the past, making them as good as immortal and sending them into the past on specific missions. Mendoza is rescued from the Spanish Inquisition and sent to Elizabethan England to collect botanical samples from the garden of Sir Walter Iden. "In The Garden Of Iden" combines some of Kage Barker's strongest passions: she is an authority on Tudor-era England, has a strong interest in botany, and a preoccupation with conspiracy theories. The author (on her personal website) mentions that many of the characters in the novel were inspired by the eccentric scholars and street actors she worked with during her career in theater.
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Summary: A "Bodice Ripper" in SF Cloathing
Review: Let me put this briefly: If you like romance novels, you will like this. Otherwise stay away. As other reviews have pointed out there are many themes here that could have made for a geat SF novel, but none of them are really developed. The characterizations are one-dimensional except for the main character, who maybe makes a 2D. Most of her development relates to her "first love". Unfortunately most of this reads like a romance novel: "My love, my love. At night we cuddled together under the blanket and read by the light of his single candle, or talked far into the dark hours. He would never give over his attempts to persuade me that I needed his Christ; and I could never resist the temptation to argue the need to save men's lives rather than their souls. Yet he had some remarkably advanced ideas for a man of his time, he really had." "Mine only love. The household slept below in silence; our little room seemed cut adrift, the cabin of a ship sailing through the vaster silence of the winter stars. How can anyone think that my lover was a paltry mortal thing? He was an immortal creature like me, and we dwelt in perfect harmony in a tiny world of bare boards and dust, leather an vellum." "You can love like that but once." Lets hope so.
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Summary: Great Start to a Spectacular Series
Review: Botanist Mendoza hates everybody. Well, she hates *mortals,* at least. It's not as if she doesn't have a right to; mortals after all, especially in 15th-century Spain, are not a very likeable bunch. Mortals killed her family, and were on the brink of torturing her to death when she was "rescued" and made into an immortal cyborg in the service of the time-traveling Dr. Zeus, Inc. Mortals stink. They put a shockingly low value on human life. They have bad manners, and worse hygiene. Except, of course, for the one she falls in love with. On assignment to collect soon-to-be-extinct plant samples in a gentry garden in England, Mendoza falls head-over-heels for a houseguest. Much wackiness ensues. When immortals dally with mortals, it always ends badly. Everybody knows this, even Mendoza, but she does it anyway. And when the inevitable comes, it does so with lyric intensity, gripping style, and a wry humor that is just enough to keep everything from getting too maudlin. Part of what makes tragedy gripping is its inevitability. Everybody sees the train on the tracks, barreling down on the hapless hero, stuck in a stalled car in the middle of the tracks. Everybody knows what's going to happen, including, usually, those directly involved. It's the denial of the inevitable that gives tragedy teeth, both for the characters and the reader. Baker manipulates the tragic elements of the story expertly, and the humorous ones adroitly. _In the Garden of Iden_ is, flat out, an excellent book that I recommend to everybody, whether fans of the genre or not.
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Summary: Interesting and Intriguing
Review: "In the Garden of Iden" is an interesting and intriguing but not quite involving novel. Before I read this, I read and thoroughly enjoyed a number of the company stories, such as last year's "Son, Observe the Time". The idea was great and the historical research absolutely meticulous and accurate. I had high expectations for this novel. I would say that the idea of the company works better in the story form than the novel. However, that's the only criticism. This novel is far above the average. If you love historical novels, it's worth reading for the absolutely accurate recreation of the Inquisition in Spain and Tudor England under Bloody Mary. If you like historical romance, there's a lovely, sad, doomed romance (What happens if an immortal cyborg falls in love with a mortal man?). There's humor, much from the endless contrast and tension of immortals struggling to blend into Tudor society. There are many telling moments. Probably the absolute best for tension and horror are the opening chapters when a small child falls into the hands of the Inquisition. The sick fanaticism and twisted logic of the Inquisitors makes for tense and horrifying reading. Everything that follows is a bit of an anticlimax. The idea works better as short stories, but is still well-worth reading.
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Summary: Great Idea! What happened?
Review: I found the premise of the story intriguing -- protecting plants for future generations. The history and the science appeared to be well researched, the characters had some substance and could certainly grow into rich personalities. I kept waiting for something to happen - interaction between the worlds, a spectacular find that could change history, a breach that required an operative from the company, a murder, something. I'm sorry to say I found it very boring.
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Summary: GREAT IDEA! Horrible delivery
Review: I'm sorry to say that Kage Bakers book has a wonderful idea and a well developed world but her writing as a whole has something to be desired. It is a cure for insomniacs... Perhaps this is because I'm a guy and this book was written by a woman with a female main character but I managed to get around half way through this book and decide that watching television was a better use of my time. I'm sorry this book was just plain boring. Once the main character becomes a cyborg and gets her first assignment your hoping for really interesting and cool things. But this isn't the case. Perhaps I'm not into botany enough or don't have enough interest in early English history. I'm sorry to say this material needed a writer that could move the material along, Kage Baker isn't that writer.
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Summary: What An Interesting - If Flawed - Premise...
Review: Time travel is nothing new to science fiction. Even the idea of people travelling through time to preserve (or to try to alter) the timeline of the world is not new to science fiction. The idea of hiding in the shadows of history to preserve that which would otherwise be lost, though... I was really impressed with the premise of "In the Garden of Iden". I thought the idea of a company that could make employees of 'indigenous' people and send them along ('along' mind you, not 'through') history to preserve plants, animals, art works, etc. only as long as they did not change history in the process to be a neat, if not revolutionary idea. Baker pulls off the idea quite well to in this book. She gives us a good feel of history unfolding while the characters of the book go about their mission in a country that's teetering on the verge of a new dark age just before it's greatest era begins. The science in the book is well-researched. The history in the book is very well researched. Even the romance manages to push the reader into an interesting parallax between love and practicality. Surprisingly enough, the one thing that bothered me about the novel was the stipulation in the premise that people sent back couldn't change "recorded history". I found myself wondering what constitutes 'recorded history'. We as a race have so much difficulty sorting the fact from the lie and the myth in our 'recorded' history - even in the past century - that I wondered how valid an argument this could be. Perhaps it's an idea that she'll pursue in a later "Company" novel. I'd be interested to see what she could do with it... All in all, I really enjoyed this novel. I blew through it like I haven't blown through a science fiction novel in a long time. While some of the topics it deals with are quite heavy, the overall read is really light. If you're looking for a fun, light book with a genuinely interesting premise, I recommend picking "In the Garden of Iden" up. Personally, I'm looking forward to getting on to the rest of the series...
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