(no subject)

[skygiants]

It was only a matter of time before reading about Josephus made me want to return to my first and best beloved horrible little man named Joseph, so after valiantly pausing for nearly a year, I have returned to my terrible horrible no good very bad idea reread of Kage Baker's Company books with The Graveyard Game.

In this book, series heroine Mendoza has disappeared; two other cyborgs, her estranged almost!dad Joseph and her pining colleague Lewis, spend the next several centuries bouncing around the cyborg world secretly investigating what's going on with her and with the broader series plot. It's probably the Company book I most enjoy reading after In the Garden of Iden, for several simple reasons:

1. it IS a series of vignettes mostly but the vignettes are a good time! I love to check in on my pals Juan Bautista and Porfirio and Latif, I dig the sense of cyborg community, I really enjoy that they all think Joseph is a bit of a scumbag. I also enjoy whenever Joseph and Lewis check a tourist destination off on their road trip agenda! I am glad that Lewis enjoyed the Bronte House Tour even if Joseph did not enjoy it at all!

2. Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax IS still my absolute enemy and his appearance DOES but for the course of The Graveyard Game, while Lewis is sitting woefully in his office drinking and listening to Loreena McKennit and writing hundreds of thousands of words of sad badfic about his horrible Victorian crush, I can pretend that Kage Baker understands the joke and is not about to go on to write the exact same hundreds of thousands of words more sad badfic about Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax herself --

3. my first and best beloved horrible little man named Joseph ... found family this and well done son guy that, no one is writing 'my child has DESERVEDLY DIVORCED me, and yet we are still inextricably entwined' arcs like Kage Baker! or if they are, I would like people to tell me about it.

Now at the end of this book we are starting to get firmly into Kage Baker's boring vision of the future and I KNOW The Life of the World to Come is just going to be a 300-page rant about puriteens and vegetarians, but, on the other hand, now that I've reread The Graveyard Game I can neither leave Lewis trapped in durance vile nor resist the temptation to read the Victor backstory, and so we will, inevitably, unfortunately, forge ahead.

Comments

[sovay]

while Lewis is sitting woefully in his office drinking and listening to Loreena McKennit and writing hundreds of thousands of words of sad badfic about his horrible Victorian crush

I forgot the Loreena McKennitt.

[skygiants]

I have remembered the Loreena McKennit since 2004 and at 75% of the way through the book I was like "did I make it up just because it seems like something Lewis would do?" but no, Kage does with great deliberateness namecheck "Mummer's Dance"!

[sovay]

but no, Kage does with great deliberateness namecheck "Mummer's Dance"!

I mean, I am also a person who puts in my fiction the music I happen to be listening to while writing.

[conuly]

I KNOW The Life of the World to Come is just going to be a 300-page rant about puriteens and vegetarians,

When I read the books that bugged me even more, if possible, than that egregious rape scene. If I'm going to be reading thinly veiled political propaganda, I would like it to be lefty flavored, thanks, not anti-lefty.

[skygiants]

It's soooo aggravating and more than that it's boring. This is a dull set of hills to die on!

[conuly]

Yes, it wasn't even an interesting dystopia! Oh, wow, vegans. Listen, if my dystopia doesn't have weird sex shit, I don't even want to know about it. (I'm aware this is a contrast to my "wtf rape scene" opinion, but I've got layers.)

[rymenhild]

Just skip all the middle bits about Alec and Edward and fake pirate AIs...

[skygiants]

I COULD. I SHOULD. unfortunately I know myself and my completionist urges and it is therefore more than likely that I won't :((((

[kore]

Oh, Joseph is so great! I think my enjoyment of the series plummeted after this one. Its not the kind of thing I want to go back and check. :-/

[skygiants]

This is the last one I think is really and truly good ... I do like the Victor book, or I remember liking the Victor book, but it's a flashing glimmer of what used to be the heights.

[vass]

Unfortunately, this (minus the spoilers, which I skipped) makes me want to read the Company series.

[skygiants]

The problem is that much of the stuff in the first half of the series is genuinely some of my favorite writing in the world, fun and smart and compelling and full of knives, and then after this point the series takes a hard crash and burn into absolute nonsense before it can satisfyingly resolve any of its arcs which means I don't feel in justice like I can recommend it per se AND YET I also desperately want to take people by the lapels and tell them to read the first four books ....