Book 1 - The Company

In the Garden of Iden

The First Company Novel

Kage Baker

- 4.6 • 20 Ratings

- $9.99

- $9.99

Kage Baker's In the Garden of Iden is the first novel in what has become one of the most popular series in contemporary SF--The Company--now back in print from Tor.

In the 24th century, the Company preserves works of art and extinct forms of life (for profit of course). It recruits orphans from the past, renders them all but immortal, and trains them to serve the Company, Dr. Zeus. One of these is Mendoza the botanist. She is sent to Elizabethan England to collect samples from the garden of Sir Walter Iden.

But while there, she meets Nicholas Harpole, with whom she falls in love. And that love sounds great bells of change that will echo down the centuries, and through the succeeding novels of The Company.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY FEB 2, 1998

Looking for a lost plant, an immortal, nearly 1000-year-old botanist returns to the 16th century from the 24th in this lively debut. On her first trip back through time, Mendoza lands in the England of 1554, just after the accession of Mary Tudor, aka Bloody Mary. Her mission: to prevent the extinction of a strain of holly that can be used in the 24th century as a cancer cure. In the past, Mendoza encounters religious persecution, flaws in her disguise and, most dangerous of all, affection for a 16th-century mortal male. She escapes these perils in a way that strongly suggests this book may be the first in a series. Which is indeed good news, since Baker's characterizations are robust and detailed, as is her development of the historical setting. Her pacing is too breezy, however, and the book's premise unusually far-fetched. Dedicated aficionados of time-travel stories will certainly find this an agreeable read, while others will recognize in Baker a fantasist of considerable promise.

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