's Best of 2001
"Sin exists," says Joseph, an immortal cyborg agent employed by Dr. Zeus, Inc., and in this fourth novel of Kage Baker's Company series, it certainly does. The Graveyard Game follows agents Joseph and Lewis as they try to find their missing friend Mendoza, who's been exiled to the Back Way Back as punishment for anti-Company activities.

Dr. Zeus, a time-travel corporation, created cyborgs to selectively preserve artifacts from the past for the edification of the 24th century, when the Company exists. But as the centuries go by for the agents, they hear strange rumors of a "silence" in the year 2355. Ominously, cyborgs who try to investigate disappear forever, hidden away or shut down by Dr. Zeus.

Joseph and Lewis become obsessed with finding Mendoza, and along the way, they uncover evidence of bizarre and dangerous Company deeds. Joseph finds strange underground holding cells, with "retired" agents in vats of preserving fluid. Meanwhile, Lewis researches the activities of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, the odd mortal who was with Mendoza when she disappeared. The two get together to discuss their disheartening quest in present-day Ghirardelli Square. Cyborgs get stoned on chocolate, and they order round after round of hot cocoa, even snorting the stuff, until a Company security tech finds them:

On the floor between their respective briefcases was a souvenir bag stuffed with boxes of chocolate cable cars, and the table was littered with foil wrappers from the chocolate they had already consumed.... The security tech scanned them and recoiled slightly at the level of Theobromos in their systems. He surveyed the litter of foil wrappers and empty cups, regarded the cocoa powder in Joseph's beard, and sighed. Two old professionals on a sloppy bender. The Graveyard Game, the best and darkest Company novel yet, showcases Kage Baker's smart, witty style. She teases readers with enough evidence of Company nastiness to make us root for the sometimes morally shifty cyborgs, while continuing to further the substantial plot. It's an extremely satisfying chapter in an excellent science fiction series, one that sets the stage for the confrontation to come. --Therese Littleton


From Publishers Weekly
This entertaining romp, the fourth in Baker's the Company series, continues the excellent premise: time traveling, immortal cyborgs who were recruited in the past as mortal children seek to enrich Dr. Zeus's Company by rescuing artifacts, artworks, information, endangered species and more. They've been doing this throughout the centuries, but now they're about to meet up with the year 2355, when their mission will end. Will they be retired with honor and rewarded for their service? Or is there a more macabre fate in store for them? Rumors about their future have abounded for centuries, and now the natty Literature Specialist Lewis and Facilitator Joseph, born in the Neolithic era, are searching for the truth, as well as for their missing friend, the Botanist Mendoza, who has disappeared, perhaps sent hundreds of thousands of years into the past, following her travails in the third book in the series, Mendoza in Hollywood. Readers unfamiliar with that novel (Baker provides a brief summary of the previous books) may wonder at the intensity of their quest, but Mendoza's whereabouts may reveal exactly what the company has in mind for the operatives it no longer wants in the field. Bouncing between centuries and locations (an interlude in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square in 2276 is especially amusing), Baker's latest stands on its own and will entice newcomers to previous titles in the series. (Feb.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-In the 24th century, time travel is possible; immortality is a gift; chocolate and caffeine are illicit drugs; and, for a price, Dr. Zeus, Inc. can obtain whatever you desire, whether that is an extinct plant, vanished artwork, or your Chumash ancestors. The Company is filled with immortal cyborgs that work in the spaces between recorded history to carry out directives. In this, the fourth novel about Dr. Zeus, operatives Lewis and Joseph seek to discover what happened to the Botanist Mendoza and her mysterious mortal lover. Hints and rumors about the true nature of Dr. Zeus and the coming Silence of 2355 from the previous novels play a major part in the plot as the cyborgs realize that more and more of their fellow operatives are disappearing. Also fueling the paranoia is the discovery of another race of humans, small men who are quite stupid except for a peculiar technical genius. They are hunting Lewis, and the Company has reasons to betray him. As the past and the present come together, Joseph struggles to learn how their human masters will answer the question, "What do you do with a tool you fear and cannot destroy once it becomes obsolete?" The Graveyard Game is not the best place to begin this series, but it is a thrilling addition to a compelling story line composed of a unique blend of history, science fiction, mystery, and touches of humor. Baker has created a world full of intriguing possibilities. -Susan Salpini, Fairfax County Public Schools, VACopyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
In the latest novel about the mysterious twenty-fourth-century consortium of wealth and power known as the Company, two high-ranking, immortal agents pursue their assignments and secret obsessions. Time seems to compress, the years flashing by as Lewis, the sentimental literature specialist, searches computer and print records for any mention of Edward Bell-Fairfax, the supposed mortal who died in the arms of the heart-broken Mendoza in frontier California in Mendoza in Hollywood [BKL F 1 00]. Meanwhile, Joseph, Mendoza's sardonic mentor, is searching for his comrade from Roman times, the enormously powerful soldier Budu, a creation of the Company who vanished with the other Enforcers right after the Norman Conquest. As the twenty-second century fades, Lewis and Joseph correspond clandestinely, closing in on the darkest Company secrets, until one morning Lewis is taken hostage by the most unlikely of terrorists. Attention to detail, a glimpse at a very likely future, and the comic pairing of Joseph and Lewis make this an excellent addition to the annals of the Company. Roberta Johnson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


The New York Times
"If John LeCarre wrote science fiction, it might read like The Graveyard Game."


Review
"I recommend this without reservation. It's smart, funny, and sardonic: nicely bblended portions of each. Crisp, skillful writing and can't-miss characters kept me up until two in the morning. I expect you'll lose sleep, too."


Book Description
Mendoza is a Preserver for The Dr. Zeus Company, living in the past to collect species for the future. But when she kills six people in California in 1863, The Company makes her disappear.

Joseph, a senior Preserver, loves Mendoza as the daughter he never had. Drunk on chocolate and fueled by rage, he's determined to find her however long it takes. Being an indestructible, immortal cyborg gives him an unlimited well of patience.

What begins as a rescue mission uncovers a conspiracy stretching across fifty centuries of recorded history. Behind it lie genocide, graveyards filled with Company agents, and the roots of the ominous Silence that falls across the world in 2355.



About the Author
Kage Baker is best known for her time travel series about The Company, of which this is the fourth volume and, more recently, for her popular fantasy novel The Anvil of the World. Born in Hollywood, California, she has been a graphic artist and mural painter, a playwright, bit player, director, teacher of Elizabethan English for the stage, stage manager and educational program coordinator. She lives in Pismo Beach, CA.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Dedicated to saving the future by preserving the past, the cyborgs of the Company now wonder if they must save themselves.

You wouldn't take Lewis for an immortal cyborg: he looks like a dapper character from a Noel Coward play. And Joseph-short and stocky in his Armani suit, with a neatly trimmed black mustache and beard that give him a cheerfully villainous look-you'd never guess that his parents drew the Neolithic cave paintings in the C￯﾿ﾽvennes. But what are these two operatives of the Company doing in an amusement arcade in San Francisco in 1996?

They're looking for Mendoza, fellow cyborg of Dr. Zeus Incorporated who has been banished Back Way Back. They're also trying to solve the mystery of her impossibly reappearing English mortal lover. Soon they will begin uncovering some extremely hush-hush stuff about what the Company has been doing with the cyborgs it no longer wants in the field.

With this fourth book in the Company series, Kage Baker once again takes the reader on a wry, intelligent, and absorbing journey into the future and the past.

About the Author:

Kage Baker was born in 1952 in Hollywood and now lives in Pismo Beach, California. She has been an artist, actor, and director at the Living History Centre and has taught Elizabethan English as a Second Language.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This entertaining romp, the fourth in Baker's the Company series, continues the excellent premise: time traveling, immortal cyborgs who were recruited in the past as mortal children seek to enrich Dr. Zeus's Company by rescuing artifacts, artworks, information, endangered species and more. They've been doing this throughout the centuries, but now they're about to meet up with the year 2355, when their mission will end. Will they be retired with honor and rewarded for their service? Or is there a more macabre fate in store for them? Rumors about their future have abounded for centuries, and now the natty Literature Specialist Lewis and Facilitator Joseph, born in the Neolithic era, are searching for the truth, as well as for their missing friend, the Botanist Mendoza, who has disappeared, perhaps sent hundreds of thousands of years into the past, following her travails in the third book in the series, Mendoza in Hollywood. Readers unfamiliar with that novel (Baker provides a brief summary of the previous books) may wonder at the intensity of their quest, but Mendoza's whereabouts may reveal exactly what the company has in mind for the operatives it no longer wants in the field. Bouncing between centuries and locations (an interlude in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square in 2276 is especially amusing), Baker's latest stands on its own and will entice newcomers to previous titles in the series. (Feb.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

When the cyborg known as Mendoza disappears out of grief for her murdered lover, fellow operatives Joseph and Lewis begin a search through time for her and discover some unpleasant secrets about their employer--Dr. Zeus Incorporated, otherwise known as The Company. The fourth installment of Baker's popular Company novels (In the Garden of Iden) spans centuries and includes stops in late 20th-century Hollywood and early 21st-century London, among other times and places. For series fans and most sf collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/00.] Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal