Kage Baker - The Graveyard Game

[I, Brian]

Original review by Elaine Frei:



What to do with an immortal cyborg who can't or won't follow the rules? Or with a whole group of cyborgs who were programmed to do things their masters no longer want done, and who - left to their own devices - threaten the very mortals who made them? These are some of the questions addressed in Kage Baker's The Graveyard Game, the fourth in her series of novels of the Company.


The Company is a 24th century corporation that has discovered the secrets of time travel and immortality, and ways to turn those powers to the Company's profit. Only it turns out that nothing is perfect and now some of the immortals they have created are turning out to be more of a liability than an asset. But since the cyborgs are, well, immortal, there is only so much the Company can do to neutralize them.


What these methods of neutralization are is what Facilitator Joseph and Literature Specialist Lewis set out to discover. Mendoza, familiar to those who have read Baker's earlier Company novels, has gone missing after being a very naughty cyborg: she has killed several mortals in direct contravention to all of her programming. Joseph and Lewis both have personal reasons for wanting to find Mendoza. Joseph is the one who recruited Mendoza into the Company during the Spanish Inquisition, when Mendoza was just a child. Joseph feels a fatherly responsibility for her. And Lewis, well Lewis has been in love with Mendoza for several centuries. He was also witness to an episode leading up to Mendoza's final transgression. He tried to warn her of what was to come, and the fact that he was unsuccessful makes him feel responsible for what went on to happen. Their search, however, ends up turning into more for both of them, with much more serious implications than either of them originally bargained for.


Those who have red the other books in the series (In the Garden of Iden, Sky Coyote, and Mendoza in Hollywood) will probably be at a certain advantage of sorts in reading The Graveyard Game. However, if you haven't read the first three books and can't get your hands on them right away, I wouldn't let that stop you from reading this book. There is enough explanation to make following the story easily possible. In addition to the interesting story, which spans more or less all of history (in flashbacks that work much better here than they are apt to do in less expert hands), there is Baker's witty social commentary that pervades The Graveyard Game. By setting the Company in a 24th century in which just about everything is illegal - coffee, tea, meat, sugar, pets, chocolate, being in any way out of the ordinary - Baker has a lot to say about our contemporary world. But these comments are not intrusive, as she blends them seamlessly into the narrative of the story.