Kage Baker - Mendoza in Hollywood

[I, Brian]

Original review by Elaine Frei:



Good news for fans of Kage Baker's series of novels of the Company. Mendoza is back, attitude intact and ready to get herself in trouble yet again. Mendoza has spent decades wandering the wilds of northern and central California, happily alone and collecting samples of plants that will go extinct with the growing population of the state like a good little cyborg.


But now Mendoza has been reassigned to a stagecoach stop in Cahuenga Pass in 1862. In a hundred years, this will be the path the Hollywood Freeway takes between Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. In 1862, however, it is a place wilder than the wilderness that Mendoza has just come from. Back east, the American Civil War rages; in Los Angeles partisans of both sides make life interesting and dangerous. Just venturing out from the stagecoach stop to go on a collecting expedition or down into the pueblo of Los Angeles brings the risk of being shot at. Some things never change, or so some current residents of Los Angeles might say.


Besides not being prepared for the violence she will encounter after so long alone, Mendoza is really not prepared for the recurring and vivid dreams of the mortal man she had loved back in Tudor England, when she was a young cyborg on her first assignment. Still, she reaches accommodation with the other cyborgs stationed at the stagecoach stop and finds work to keep her busy - most of the time. And of course she finds trouble. She and one of the other cyborgs manage to find an anomaly in what will be Laurel Canyon that manages to do what all cyborgs learn is impossible, and the two of them are thrown briefly into the future. Then things go from bad to worse when Mendoza runs out of soon-to-be extinct plants to collect and she has way too much time on her hands. The only relief from the tedium is the ongoing film festival of films yet to be made which another of the cyborgs arranges to have shipped in for the entertainment of the staff.


As if things weren't bad enough, one day when Mendoza is alone at the stagecoach stop the Englishman appears. He is the spit and image of Mendoza's long-dead lover. He is also a spy for Her Majesty's government. Mendoza knows he isn't her Englishman, but her emotions, still all too human, doesn't want to know that. And that is when things go really bad for Mendoza.


Mendoza in Hollywood is my personal favorite of the Company novels. It manages to combine action, the history of Hollywood (although most of it hasn't actually happened when the action takes place, which doesn't matter a bit), the history of southern California during the Civil War, and a decidedly unconventional romance all in a satisfying package. Oh, and there is Erich von Stroheim, a rather vocal condor. That bird, and Juan Bautista, his cyborg owner, make the novel worth it all by themselves.