Rating: 
Summary: A necessary read but a sleeper
Review: I have very much enjoyed reading Kage Bakers' Company books. However, I must say... this one's a real sleeper. It's a necessary read because it has valuable information (very little...) and insight for the next book, "The Graveyard Game", but I snored thru it.
Especially the chapter on Babylon. I was tempted several times to skip the whole thing, but kept thinking I would miss information I would need later on. NOT!
However, don't let this book turn you off to reading the rest of the series. "The Graveyard Game" is fantastic. I couldn't put it down. I hope the author is busy writing the next ( and hopefully answering *all* my questions!) book.
Rating: 
Summary: best so far
Review: i liked the first book and was let down a bit by the second. thought i'd give this one a try before giving up on the series. so, now, i have ordered the 4th, in hardback yet and used to boot, just so i can follow mendoza's adventures in time. i'm not much of a critic, i just like to be entertained. kage baker is taking her place among my favorite writers, who include connie willis, dana stabenow, kathleen taylor, and nevada barr.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent, interesting, historical science fantasy
Review: I love this series, definitely it's on my buy-in-hardcover-order-in-advance-first-edition list. Kage Baker has a fluid, supple writing style that conveys a lot while never intruding into the reader's awareness as overly mannered. Big, themed storylines can be overwhelming at times, with the larger drama rendering personal stories as petty or trite. I haven't found that in the Company War books. Baker's overarching storyline has enough power to carry through multiple books and characters, while offering niches for more personal, intimate stories. Her characters are dramatic, deftly realized, and have odd enough personalities that I can believe in them as immortal cyborgs. That's an important point, since as a reader I am always aware that immortal or abnormally long-lived character will be increasingly alienated and psychologically different. I thought that Baker did an excellent job conveying that difference, especially in the later books. Mendoza in Hollywood is a neatly told, nicely researched story. I don't know if it's the first novel I'd give someone to hook them on this series, but it's definitely a fun read.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, interesting, historical science fantasy
Review: I love this series, definitely it's on my buy-in-hardcover-order-in-advance-first-edition list. Kage Baker has a fluid, supple writing style that conveys a lot while never intruding into the reader's awareness as overly mannered. Big, themed storylines can be overwhelming at times, with the larger drama rendering personal stories as petty or trite. I haven't found that in the Company War books. Baker's overarching storyline has enough power to carry through multiple books and characters, while offering niches for more personal, intimate stories. Her characters are dramatic, deftly realized, and have odd enough personalities that I can believe in them as immortal cyborgs. That's an important point, since as a reader I am always aware that immortal or abnormally long-lived character will be increasingly alienated and psychologically different. I thought that Baker did an excellent job conveying that difference, especially in the later books. Mendoza in Hollywood is a neatly told, nicely researched story. I don't know if it's the first novel I'd give someone to hook them on this series, but it's definitely a fun read.
Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't finish it.
Review: I loved Kage Baker's first two books, but she fell flat on her face in this one. Unlike Ms. Baker's previous books, where she managed to make history interesting, she failed miserably, her descriptions bland and leaving me bambouzled. I held on until page 156 and then I gave up when they had just traveled forward in time apparently and I was still bored as hell.
I would've given it one star but that wouldn't be fair considering I didn't finish it, so I give it the neutral rating of 3 in the hopes that people with as little patience as me heed my warning and those with more realize that it has room for improvement (lots of room) in the next few hundred pages.
Rating:
Summary: Surprising depths
Review: I ordered this title with some trepidation, having adored the first two in the series, but led by earlier Amazon reviewers to expect a possible disappointment. My fears were groundless. Baker is the current genre mistress of character and setting, and a reader sensitive to her delicious ironies is soon more intoxicated than an immortal cyborg plied with theobromos. Mendoza In Hollywood is perhaps not QUITE so overtly FUNNY as Sky Coyote, but it is just as compelling.
Rating:
Summary: Problems arise . . .
Review: I strongly dislike those interminable series of novels which are written only because they can be sold (think Terry Brooks), not because they're worth writing. They cease being fiction worth reading and become only product. I fear Baker's "Novels of the Company" series may be moving in that direction. _In the Garden of Iden_ was pretty good, a story of engineered immortals spending their centuries in the service of a far future commercial operation known as "Dr. Zeus," preserving works of art and endangered species (since time travel only works one way). Mendoza, recruited in the 16th century, is a 18-year-old botanist for the Company who goes to study now-vanished medicinal plants in the garden of Walter Iden in England and then falls in love with an ardent protestant, Nicholas Harpole, who eventually dies at the stake for his faith. The second novel, _Sky Coyote,_ wasn't nearly as good. Mendoza is mostly an onlooker this time in early 18th century California as immortal agents of the Company persuade an Indian tribe to allow itself to be completely relocated to a Company preserve. The writing is well crafted, but the plot meanders and Baker indulges herself with lengthy retellings of Indian mythology and folktales. _Mendoza in Hollywood_ is even more annoying, I'm afraid. Mendoza is once more the central character, in Los Angeles of 1862, manning a stage stop with a team of other immortal researchers and collectors of scientific specimens -- but there's really no plot furthering the series story line until a British imperialist conspiracy that appears only in the last hundred pages. And this time, Baker spends a great deal of time retelling the action of several D. W. Griffith films! This could have been (perhaps should have been) a 100-page novella. Well, the fourth volume is sitting on my desk so I might as well see if this obviously talented author can get back on track. . . .
Rating:
Summary: Best Yet!
Review: I think this is the best Company book so far! I've read all three and I think they are all great. This one really kept moving and you can't put it down. Good history, good drama, and good suspense! Mendoza finds herself in Los Angeles during the 1860's where Hollywood will one day be. She is entereing civilization again and getting used to mortal and immortal people. Her long lost love from England comes back to haunt her in her dreams... and in the flesh. It's narrated by Mendoza talking to a review board - testifying about her experience. This book opens a lot of doors and ends surprisingly. I can't wait to receive book 4. I recommend you start with the first one to get some background on the Company, and while you're there you might as well read the second book too! If you like time travel, immortality, and a bit of history - you'll love this series. I want everyone to know, I was introduced to these books from Amazon's recommendations. Look through your recommendations, if you see something you might like, ORDER IT! You have nothing to lose! If you don't like it, send it back! I kept mine...
Rating:
Summary: Better & Better
Review: I was lucky enough to obtain an advance copy of this book, and it is WONDERFUL! I loved the first two novels by Baker - this one not only lives up to their promise, but takes the story to new and more fascinating heights. We resume the story of Mendoza, this time in Old California, and Baker displays her usual marvellous blend of history and fiction: she's generous with details of historical fact, which she then weaves into a wild tapestry of speculation and conspiracy. Not only are the interior workings of Dr. Zeus revealed in yet more sinister detail, she manages to suggest some really astonishing things about the goals of the British Empire. The lives of several of Mendoza's fellow cyborgs are revealed in hilarious and/or tragic chapters, the history of Catalina Island is shown in an entirely unexpected light, it's made appallingly obvious that the problem of urban violence in Los Angeles hasn't changed in the last 150 years, and Mendoza's love life takes a turn for the better, the worse and the really strange. Don't dismiss this as a reincarnation cliche - the intimations make it plain that there's nothing so ordinary involved in the existance of the delicious Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax. As usual, Baker is laugh out loud funny and yet pitiless when it comes to the hard cruel facts of life; and she ambushes you at several turns with both lyrical spirituality and cunning surrealism. Buy this book and settle down for a really wild and vastly enjoyable ride.
Rating:
Summary: Mendoza in Love
Review: I wasn't certain how to take this longish third novel of The Company. On the one hand, I enjoyed the first two enough to continue. I like Baker's tantalizing, expository striptease as she slowly reveals the history and future of the company. I like Mendoza's pragmatism and the way Baker counterpoints her attitude with those of the oddball cast of characters with whom Mendoza shares this book. I like the oddly compelling ending about which I cannot write without giving away a huge chunk of surprise.
On the other hand, I was put off by the overall feel of the book, which seems more like an extended love letter to Hollywood in general and DW Griffith specifically, than a novel about Mendoza and her dilemma. Not that this is a bad thing, but when a large portion of the book is devoted to a scene-by-scene recount of the famed director's "Intolerance", it begins to feel like so much filler.
Baker's humor is more understated in "Mendoza in Hollywood", relying primarily on the character "Oscar", one of Mendoza's companions in the Caslifornia desert where she has been assigned. Oscar is an operative whose primary function whould be data collection, but who has become obsessed with his cover, that of a traveling salesman, and spends the entire book trying to sell a pie safe. His humor is more broad than I generally like, being more WC Fields than Groucho Marx, but he does make some genuinely insightful observations and get off a few laughs.
Other characters are more tragic, expecially the older cyborgs, whose minds are starting to break down after millenia on the job.
Mostly, this is an expository book, not one that deals much with plot or characterization. It's a fine placeholder for what I hope will be better books in the future, but certainly cannot stand on it's own.
The reason I gave this book 4 stars, however, is that the final third of the book, where we begin to see something of a plot develop, is exciting as all get out, being full of mystery, intrigue, romance, derring-do and some of the stranger bombshells to be dropped since this series began.
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