The Graveyard Game (The Company Series #4) by Kage Baker

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¸vennes. 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.

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

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, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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