Company Series Book 01
Narrated by Janan Raouf
In 16th-century Spain, everybody expects the Spanish Inquisition, as they have
a well-known tendency to cart people off to their dungeons on trumped-up charges.
What 5-year-old Mendoza, on the brink of being tortured as a Jew, is totally
unprepared for is to be rescued by the Company -- the ultimate bureaucracy of
the 24th century -- and made immortal. In return, all she has to do is travel
through time on a series of assignments for the Company and collect endangered
botanical specimens. The wisecracking, mildly misanthropic Mendoza wants nothing
to do with historical humans, but her first assignment is to travel to England
in 1553 -- uncomfortably close to those damn Inquisitors -- with Joseph and Nefer,
two other Company operatives. Their intent is to gather herb samples from
the garden of Sir Walter Iden, a foolish though generous country squire.
(Kage Baker knows her Shakespeare: Sir Walter is the descendant of Alexander Iden,
loyal subject of Henry IV, who slew the hungry rebel Jack Cade in that very garden
in Kent.)
The cyborg trio poses as Doctor Ruy Lopez, his daughter Rosa (the irrepressible
Mendoza, now grown), and her duenna, Dona Marguerita; Sir Walter's hospitality
and discretion are bought for the promise of restored youth. (There are hilarious
moments that call to mind the Coneheads, who claimed to be from France when caught
doing anything peculiar.) Sir Walter's secretary, Nicholas Harpole, is immediately
suspicious of and hostile towards the strange "Spanish" visitors, which prompts
Mendoza to fall in love with him. Nicholas has his own badly kept secret:
he's proudly Protestant at a time when Queen Mary and Philip of Spain are on
a Catholicizing rampage. Mendoza knows Nicholas is probably doomed, and that as
a Company operative she cannot meddle with his fate, but love makes people do
desperate things. Baker surpasses even Connie Willis in humor and precision of
period detail in this fresh, ingenious first novel.
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