Saturday, December 15, 2007

Mendoza in Hollywood by Kage Baker


This is one of Baker's Company novels, and is an excellent read. Baker balances humour and sadness well in this book. Watching the immortal operatives get carried away by their specialities is amusing, especially Imarti and Juan. I found I even caught a bit of their enthusiasm as they enthused. But immortals have seen plenty of sorrow in their long lives, and must cope with it in some way - and Juan, at the beginning of his immortal life, has to learn sorrow like everyone else.

This is set in Hollywood before there was Hollywood, in the 1860's, and there are a lot of references to films, serving to point out how the operatives treat that now (1860's) as something they are watching rather than living in, as history already because they know what happens next. Where they don't know what will happen next, they make as many mistakes as the average mortal.

Mendoza in Hollywood first published 2000

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