Synopses & Reviews
Take a ride through time with the devil. In the sixth book of the Company series, we meet Executive Facilitator General Labienus. He's used his immortal centuries to plot a complete takeover of the world since he was a young god-figure in Sumeria. In a meditative mood, he reviews his interesting career. He muses on his subversion of the Company black project ADONAI. He considers also Aegeus, his despised rival for power, who has discovered and captured a useful race of mortals known as Homo sapiens umbratilis. Their unique talents may enable him to seize ultimate power. Labienus plans a double cross that will kill two birds with one stone: he will woo away Aegeus's promising protege, the Facilitator Victor, and at the same time dispose of a ghost from his own past who has become inconvenient. The Hugo-nominated novella "Son Observe The Time," telling that part of the story, is integrated into the narrative. Fans of the series will love this book, and new readers will be enthralled.
Review
Praise for
The Life of the World to Come:
"Another entry in Baker's superlative series about Dr. Zeus. . . . An astonishing and thoroughly satisfying installment. What's more, Baker's overall concept and rationale, flawlessly sustained through five books, grows ever more spellbinding and impressive."—Kirkus Reviews [starred review]
“Bakers trademark mix of serious speculation and black humor informs this solid addition to her time-travel series.”—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“One of the most consistently entertaining series to appear in the late nineties. The novels read like literary pastiches—echoes of Heinlein and Robert Louis Stevenson fill this one—and the narrative pace matches that of most thrillers.”
—Amazing Stories
“Returning to her popular series featuring characters from the Company, Baker expertly combines romance, myth, and high adventure.”
—Library Journal
“Alec is quite a character, especially for the sedate twenty-fourth century, and in Bakers skillful hands, his story is well told and engrossing.”
—Booklist
“The strengths of The Life of the World to Come are many. The structure of the novel, moving full circle and back and forth through time, is ingenious and deft, creating a mesmerizing chain of cause and effect, effect and cause, as in the best time-travel fiction….an excellent novel, and absorbing post-historical bildungsroman and an impressive upping of the “Company” sequences ante.”
--Locus
Review
Praise for Children of the CompanyA Romantic Times Book Club nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel of 2005
A Kirkus Best Book of 2005
"Kage Baker is the greatest natural storyteller to enter the field since Poul Anderson." -Gardner Dozois
"Baker's sixth novel featuring the exploits of the time-traveling corporation known as The Company offers a compelling meditation on the events in the life of one man whose exploits span the course of human history." -Library Journal
"Vividly evoked. . . .Baker has a light touch, and her effervescent characterization and talent for social comedy make The Children of the Company picturesque and picaresque, sometimes extremely funny." -Nick Gevers, Locus
"Anything Kage Baker publishes I will immediately rush out and read! I am never disappointed. The woman is a marvel. She can take on any voice, in any time, and make it sing high and low."-- Ellen Kushner
"Funny, heart-rending, terrifying, pellucid, Baker's magnificent series grows in stature with every installment." -Kirkus, starred review
"Through these connected tales and Baker's frame, which focuses on a corrupt cyborg leader named Labienus, we gain new insight into the complexities of cyborg politics, while the existence of another human species, Homo sapiens umbratilis, holds out a dark promise fro humanity's future." -Publishers Weekly
"The book unfolds through both Labienus' memories and the journals and artifacts of Victor and others caught in his web. As in the other Company novels, the time line spanned is prodigious, despite which Baker never stints on characters and details that capture the reader's fancy."--Booklist
Review
"[Baker's] effervescent characterization and talent for social comedy make The Children of the Company picturesque and picaresque."
Locus
Review
"Funny, heart-rending, terrifying, pellucid, Baker's magnificent series grows in stature with every installment."
Kirkus
Synopsis
In the sixth book of the Company series, Executive Facilitator General Labienus plans a double cross that will kill two birds with one stone: he will woo away his rival's promising protege, and at the same time dispose of a ghost from his own past who has become inconvenient.
About the Author
KAGE BAKER has been an artist, actor, and director at the Living History Centre and has taught Elizabethan English as a Second Language. Born in 1952 in Hollywood, she lives in Pismo Beach, California, the Clam Capital of the World.