If you haven’t signed up for Tor’s subscription program, prepare ye to enter the dark side of giving away your email address to yet another person.
According to SonomaLass, this week’s free eBook is In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker. Sayeth the Lass, “It is the first full-length book of her fabulous Company series, an amazing mixture of science fiction and history, with elements of romance, that I can’t recommend highly enough.” The book has a Wiki page of its own, which signals to me that someone liked the book enough to spend time building a relatively worthwhile entry about it, and hey, free eBook. As Jane once said, it’s amazing the things for which I’ll give away my email address.
It’s a great book, and the start to a really good series. I adore the humor, and the cyborgs, but there’s a weirdly epic romance that starts here and undergoes, hmmm how to put it? some interesting twists and variations.
The first few books in this series are good. But Kage Baker takes a very, very, very wrong turn (imho) in one of the books near the end of the entire series, so I would advise anyone interested to not bother reading more after the first three or so. I won’t say what the twist was, but I’ll say this: the choices she made for her characters confused, disappointed and even enraged me. It was especially hard to put up with since the rest of the series has so much going for it. The worldbuilding is great, and though some cliches get shoved in, they are easy to ignore, or well executed, or otherwise don’t detract from the work as a whole. But after Baker makes the wrong turn…argh.
Thanks for letting us know, Sarah.
Free and book in the same sentence? Yep, I gave my email addy up.
Loved In the Garden of Iden. I also particularly enjoyed the sequel Sky Coyote, with her depiction of the Chumash trading societies that translated their activities into modern equivalents. Great way to show the sophistication of the trade networks.
Thanks for the heads-up; I’m new to your site and still haven’t discovered all the goodies you all blog about 🙂
While the latter books aren’t quite as good, the series is one of my favorites. The characters are good, and the world engaging.
Granted, as E.M. Pink said, it takes an annoying turn later on. Still – well worth the read. My favorite overall being The Graveyard Game..
I’m on the Tor and Baen free book emails. It’s nice, even if I haven’t read any of them yet, I like knowing I can just download it to my computer.
I recently found out about Kage Baker from a pal and look forward to reading her work. Thanks for the heads up about this offer.
That is a fantastic book to acquire for free. Although it took Sky Coyote to get me hooked, Kage Baker is no one of my favourite authors. [Her book Anvil of the Sun is also excellent fantasy but you need to go into it knowing that it started out as a series of short stories.]
I heart Baker’s the Company series. Yes, I was also somewhat disappointed by the ending, but after 11 or more books, umpteen different plot lines, and a gajillion fab characters, it is a hell of a ride. I love the short stories, and Baker’s many references to (and jokes about) California history. This is a great book to get for free.
Haven’t read it, so I can’t say whether it’s good or not, but having a wiki page doesn’t guarantee a good read. Anyone, including the author or publicists at the company, can make a wiki.
However, yay, free book, I’m so there.
I love the third one; it’s all about early movies in Hollywood. Sort of. And about twenty other things.
Read the first one back when it was the only one, a zillion years ago; I sort of stopped after the fourth one, but I should go search them out.
The first one rocked my socks, with the Elizabethan stuff, and the others that I’ve read were each totally engaging as part of the series but also for their unique settings. If I had to pick a favorite, it’s probably Mendoza In Hollywood, which I think is the third one.
I’m also a choco-holic, which may explain part of the attraction of these books.
I lost track of the series for a while, and at one stage when I tried to read one of the newer ones, I found myself lost. I decided it had either been too long a break or that I had skipped a title. Having the e-book is my motivation to go back and start over—I see the number of full-length books and short stories has become quite impressive!