The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 18 March 2001
by Kage Baker
Sit down to this book and partake in what amounts to a massive invasion and colonization of human history. A girl on the brink of being tortured by the Spanish Inquisition, five-year-old Mendoza is kidnapped by a mysterious advocate and taken to a vast complex, where for the next thirteen years, she is conditioned and altered and taught to become an immortal. A vast company in the 24th century has devised time travel and near-immortality. With these powers, they are plumbing the past for vanished species, lost artworks, and extinct plants. They use these transformed humans to do their work. In the process, though, these immortals adopt a serious disdain for violent, brutal, and ignorant mortal humanity. Their superiority comes through in many of their interactions. Humankind is the destructive force that they are employed to fight. Yet, they also have a delicate relationship with Time. They can't alter anything that is recorded in the 24th century, but they certainly can play havoc with history. Mendoza, new to the job, plunked down in 16th century England, discovers its pitfalls as well as its adventures. She may become more attached to the violent monkeys than she ever dreamed. This book is a historical romance with a strong dose of science fiction. It is witty, and its historical detail is closely observed. The characters are fairly well drawn. However, by making the protagonists immortal, endowing them with a separate, outsiders' view of humanity, they end up at a curious distance. Despite a love affair, unconvincing in its dripping concupiscence, there is little compassion in the book. The reader may end up failing to relate at all to the people who are written here. Too little of the immortals' presumably noble mission is described, and the mortals are given a somewhat flat distance. They are more toyed with than related to. With an extremely similar time-travel device, Connie Willis wrote two novels which manage, also to bring immediacy to the plight of the protagonists. They suffer with their historical companions. Baker, while writing an entertaining novel, left me at too great a distance to really engage with it.