293

Phew. This is the last of a series of novels and short story collections about the adventures of time traveling cyborgs. Storylines hurtle towards the Silence - the date when all knowledge of the future stops. Of course it's weird, but it was satisfying enough. ( )

This 'Sons of Heaven' wraps up the tale of the Company. Several different Company factions compete to gain control on the day history stops, 9 July, 2355. This multiple POV tale neatly closes all of the previous story loops and provides a satisfying conclusion. ( )

The last book of the Company series! After nine novels the question of what happens when the Silence finally hits is a huge one. I really enjoyed this book, but it just didn't live up to the build-up. The narration is split between many different characters, all preparing for the year 2355, and so it reads more like a collection of short stories than a complete novel. I was interested in, but did not like, the Mendoza-Edward-Alec-Nicholas (the time travelling quartet) storyline, which has dragged down the entire series and is slightly creepy and paternalistic besides. Lewis spends time with the little people under the hill, who are easily the spookiest part of the series. But the one I really loved reading about was Victor, who spies for each of the two main Immortal groups but has an allegiance all his own.

SPOILERS AHEAD!


So the mystery is finally revealed--in 2355, all of Dr. Zeus converges on a single island. Victor takes out the two big bad Immortal groups in a single swipe, leaving Suleyman's crew, Budu's Enforcers, the mortals and the time-travelling quartet to battle it out. Alec convinces everyone to let him take over and gently guide--not rule--the mortals to a less destructive manner of living. It is very anti-climactic. ( )

Kind of a quiet ending. Since the bad guys were only big/introduced in the past few books, and not majorly, their comeuppance was kind of meh. And other than their comeuppance the denouement was practically unevventful. It didn't bother me too much, though. It did wrap everything up just fine IIRC. ( )

The Sons of Heaven in no way fixed my objection to the multiple-personality problem, although the "raising a cyborg" interludes were occasionally funny. The good parts are Lewis and his captor/princess, the intra-Company politicking, and the overall neat wrap-up of the larger plot, which I was mostly satisfied with.

This is really the end of the series - there are a few other bits and pieces here and there, but they're purely bonus material. I have to say after reading everything, I remain convinced that the Company works better as a conceit to build short stories from than as a world to build actual novels in, but it comes together well enough at the end. ( )

It seems no series these days can end without going all super-hero on its characters (I'm looking at you, Peter Hamilton), and Baker's long-running Company series is no exception. "Feh!" I say. If I wanted the Avengers, I'd buy comics.

Still I did enjoy the book. It was certainly much better than its most recent predecessors. There's not a lot of doubt how things will end, only the details of who does what to whom, there being so many parties revved up to be the last mortals or immortals standing in 2355. Baker does a good job bouncing between them. Mendoza is no longer the swooning heroine of a bad romance novel, but neither is she as interesting or as important as she was in the early novels. The rest of Baker's heros would be right at home in a classic to late Heinlein novel. Her villains continue to be powerful and unbelievably clueless. It's not a fair fight, but it's a fun one. ( )

Just a couple short comments, which add really nothing of consequence but may contain slight spoilers:

The LibraryThing reviewers who dislike this book all offer legitimate critiques. Perhaps half of the book is devoted to Mendoza's family, and it's both slow and occasionally annoying. And the climax--as Joseph's epilogue complains--is pretty darn tidy. Mendoza and Joseph are mere shadows of themselves in this book, and the reincarnations of Nicholas continue to be unbearable (even after they come to their senses, methinks). And, yes, there's too much California and London for a book that supposedly discusses world domination salvation.

But the last half of the book is just wonderful, with Budu's army of massive tenors and countertenors, Victor's absolutely perfect revenge on his masters, Lewis's escape from his fate, and all the threads converging on Avalon on The Day of Silence. Captain Morgan's schemes actually work. There are obvious jokes, jokes that assume you read carefully, and jokes that assume you're well-read. Gosh this is fun.



This review was also published on a dabbler's journal. ( )

I've followed Kage Baker for years - since the days before she'd even published a Company novel. I've read each of the Company stories, savoring each novel, each short story. I love her worlds, I love her characters, and I love her writing style.

This book was not her best. I am happy that she was able to resolve her story before she died, but I was left wondering if the softball ending was because of her illness. I could easily see several more novels filling the gaps between this and the previous, and at times the pace of the Sons of Heaven reflected this.

To be fair, my favorite characters are most assuredly not Alec/Edward/Nicholas, and even Mendoza (so perfect in In the Garden of Iden) has been reduced to mediocrity by her love for them. Honestly? I could have gone for another book about Lewis or further developments with Joseph, or really, pretty much anything else.

I love this book, as I love all of her stories. I just wish it would have been better. ( )

The finale to The Company series.

After blitzing through all eight books of this series, the finale comes as somewhat of a big disappointment as the revelation and resolution of the end came in an anti-climactic fashion, due to part of its deus ex machina nature. This is in some part due to one of the biggest pitfalls of time travel stories; the question of how to answer all the temporal divergent plots in a logical manner without causing a paradox. For "The Sons of Heaven", the solution seems have been in the vein of to "let God sort out the mess" as the ending was literally a deus ex machina ("God from the machine") as the main characters somehow unlocked the secrets of time and space, and for all intents and purposes, became omnipotent beings. And with that, dictated the end of the conflict, and thus the series. This is not usually an issue, if the result was due to some conflict the protagonist had to overcome. Instead, the end result seemed to have been divorced from any main plot progression making this seem come out of nowhere with no rational. Yes, Edward was able to somehow discover the true meaning of space-time, but that was also due to his own deus ex machina moment, which makes it more than one too many.

This is all the more disappointing, as Kage Baker was able to effectively build the suspense of the Silence through effective story telling and interesting characters. For the end to come as such, feels really out of place. Instead of a complex and engaging story, we are treated to a Twin Peaks-like tangent, in a "Swiss Family Mendoza" bizarro story that had almost no relevant connection to the other subplots. If this development with Alex/Nicholas/Edward and Mendoza was written in its own book, it would have at least made for some interesting reading, similar to "The Man Who Folded Himself" or "The Time Traveler's Wife", books that deal with the personal stories of living out of time. However, as part of a story that was supposed to be the buildup to the Silence, it felt really out of place, effectively weakening the overall story, instead of strengthening it.

For seven volumes, Kage Baker has managed to keep the series and story alive due to the strength of her characters and by subtly building up the mystery of the Silence. It's sad to see that effort seem to be squandered away with this last volume. ( )

This is not a book to read, if you haven't read any of the others in the series:

In the Garden of Iden
Sky Coyote
Mendoza in Hollywood
The Graveyard Game
The Life of the World to Come
The Children of the Company
The Machine's Child

Along with the anthologies:
Black Projects, White Knights
Gods and Pawns

In the final book all the characters that have appeared in Baker's earlier books and short stories are all brought together for the final climax. At the end of The Machine's Child Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax has taken over Alex Checkerfield's body as he and Mendoza escape from the company's Alpha station with the necessary material to turn Alex, now Edward into a cyborg. Lewis had been left in the clutches of the little people, presumably to find a way to destroy the cyborgs. Joseph, now a renagade from The Company, reawakens Budu, the Enforcer that recruited him.

There are so many different plot points all coming together in this book that summarizing is difficult. The book starts out with the Little People. The social structure is reminiscent of a bee hive. The queen (or quean, as Baker spells it) gives birth to a daughter. It seems in this society all the children born are males which basically carry out the function of drones with a few of the males attaining a higher order. The birth of a daughter signifies that she will be the next queen. The old queen is not willing to give up her realm and drives the daughter out. The daughter finds the corpse of Lewis. Since she is only a child. She pretends he is her child and feeds him. Lewis, however, is not dead. The poison the little people used only disabled him severly. With the care and attention ot the child, he begins to regenerate. Without the regeneration facilities of The Company this is a slow process. They while away the time with Lewis recounting all the tales he's required as a Literature Preservationist. Meanwhile, Budu directs Joseph to recruit the aid of William Randolph Hearst, now a cyborg, in his plans to destroy the evil men that are running The Company. Mendoza meanwhile is in sort of a fog, because Edward has downloaded the consciousnesses of Alex and Nicholas into a protected file within her. The Captain regenerates the body, now of Edward, into a cyborg. Once revived Edward convinces the Captain and Mendoza to bear children for the consciousnesses of Alex and Nicholas. With these players now on the field the end game of what happens at the Silence begins.

I enjoyed the interaction of Lewis with the Princess Tiarra Parrakeet. At times I was disappointed when the action moved away from his predicament to follow along with the others. Joseph's segments were disappointing. I always enjoyed Joseph's con man approach to life, and his service with the Company. In this last book he's reduced to just being a go between lackey for Budu and Hearst. Some of the weaker moments come from the Edward, Mendoza, Alex and Nicholas quadrangle. It was in the passages of Mendoza's pregnancy and the children's infancy that I found my attention wondering away. I can understand why Ms. Baker included these passages. They demonstrate that although Edward, Alex and Nicholas were all formed from the same DNA each in his turn was uniquely affected by the environment in which they were originally brought up in.

*********SPOILER ALERT*********

I found the omnipotence gained by Edward after his conversion to a full cyborg a weak plot contrivance. In a sense it set the stage well for the end, but I think it could have been handled better without the god-like powers he attained with the conversion. She never really demonstrates fully why Edward changes from his desire to rule the world to become the proponent of free will.

The one plot resolution that seemed most fitting was Victor's revenge. Victor had been forced to be a pawn in the power struggles of Labienius and Aegeus. By using the abilities that Labienius programmed into him. He turned the tables on him. Thus he was able to save the survivors of the Silence from the draconian devastation of Labienius and the enslavement that would have been Aegeus' rule.

I would have liked to have a better knowledge of Budu and his Enforcers.

Overall I definitely enjoyed the book even with the weak points. It is a satisfying conclusion to Baker's Company novels tying up the loose ends left from the other novels and short stories. It doesn't necessarily portend the end of the Company novels. There is so much of time that could still be explored through the eyes of the immortals. She does have one novel I've yet to read "Rude Mechanicals" which focuses on Lewis and Joseph. ( )

(Amy) And finally, the end of the Company books - well, the end of the series proper; there are a couple of Company collections I have yet to read, and doubtless a few more odds and ends here and there. But regardless, this contains the climax and conclusion of the metaplot whose thread has been winding through the series - in short, the payoff. Which was, I found, somewhat anticlimactic, and really pretty disappointing. I liked the book, I just didn't think the destination was worthy of the journey. It doesn't make me regret the time I spent on the series, though - I enjoyed each and every book along the way, in ways incidental to the metaplot, so the enh quality to the ending doesn't retroactively ruin the series for me. In fact, I'll probably re-read it some day.

So, overall summation of the Company series: Recommended, but don't pin too many hopes on the big ending.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/zenos-library/2008/09/the_sons_of_heaven_kage... ) ( )

I enjoyed the whole series. I had disappointments. The characters of Alex, Mendoza and Joseph that I loved so much in the beginning become much to quiet and passive in the end.
Still I loved the adventure and recommend this wonderfully exciting series to everyone. The series gave me lots to think about and question.
Kage Baker Rocks!!! ( )

See In the Garden of Iden. ( )

A limp, disappointing ending to a generally enjoyable series. I loved all the California history. I loved the characters Joseph and Lewis. And Mendoza too, until she turned into a romance novel doormat. I felt the same way Joseph did about Nicholas / Edward / Alec, I hated each iteration more then the last. I found myself dreading the chapters with them.

I disliked all the silly crap about vegetarianism and the idea that man devolves into otaku as time goes by. I began to seriously wonder if Baker was some kind of neocon, deeply in love with the British Empire.

The fascinating characters Suleyman & Budu were left with virtually nothing to do at the end. The supposedly Machiavellian Labienus and Aegeus were absurdly led whistling into a dark alley to be clubbed.

Gods and Pawns, the previous book, was a load of fun though. Kage Baker’s short story collections are more fun then the novels. ( )

I highly recommend the Company series, if you enjoy witty, well-written, fun science fiction, ala Connie Willis (though I think Baker is the better writer). This is the eighth and final novel in the series, though there are side-books containing shorter forms.

Unlike most series, however, the publisher does not put numbers on them (e.g., "the first book in the Company series"). And you do really need to read them in order (though there are few you could skip without missing a whole lot, IMHO). Also unlike some series, the books do not recap what has gone before, really. So, beware. For your reference, here they are, with a brief subjective comment:

1 - In the Garden of Iden (The Company). Possibly the best of them all. If you don't like this one, don't waste your time on the others! This one explains the premise for the series. Start here.
2 - Sky Coyote (A Novel of the Company, Book 2). You can skip this one and not miss anything critical. It was just okay, in my opinion. If you like the Joseph character, read this one.
3 - Mendoza in Hollywood: A Company Novel (The Company) A neat book, and quite necessary to the whole.
4 - The Graveyard Game (The Company)Features Joseph and Lewis. Not really necessary, and not one of the better ones.
5 - The Life of the World to Come (The Company)Okay, I lied, the first book isn't the best one. This one is. Some people don't seem to like the Captain, but I thought he was a hoot. Who wouldn't like to have their own personal AI buddy looking out for us? Arrr.
6 - The Children of the Company (The Company)Less like a novel, and more a collection of stories/novellas, all about the bad guys. I wouldn't have minded missing this one.
7 - The Machine's Child (The Company)Though some reviews were negative about this one, I liked it. Necessary plot information here, too.
8 - The Sons of Heaven (the book in question) Finally! The answers to all are revealed, and very satisfyingly, too. Sorry to see the series end, but I'm glad to see I haven't wasted my time tracking all these books down and reading them. Which leads to another complaint about the publishers:

Why aren't these books available? The first one is very hard to find. The Science Fiction Book Club has been issuing the series in pairs, but as of right now the first two "omnibus" editions aren't available used. The last four are in print right now, issued as "Company Men" and "The Company They Keep."

As for the books themselves, I have only a few minor peeves. The author is from California, and has a background in Elizabethan England. Virtually every scene happens in one of these two locales. Gets a bit dull after 8 books. On the other hand, the authenticity of her language is wonderful in Garden of Iden.

The other peeve is that the "little people" are never explained properly. Who are they? Where did they come from? What is "the Memory"?

The bad guys (the evil immortals) are a bit cardboard, I thought. And the humans (non-immortals like you and me) of the 24th century are so pathetic it's a bit overdone. Surely it would be possible to empathize with the immortal good guys without having such simply bad enemies and simply stupid human race in need of saving. So, it could've been a deeper, more sophisticated series. As it is, the Company series is mostly a romp, and a lot of fun. I'm sorry to see it end.

( )

So I've long since grown tired of Kage Baker's writing style, but I was hooked enough on the concept of the Company that I wanted to find out what happened on 9 July 2355 so I've been reading the main plot arc stories. The Sons of Heaven is the conclusion of the series, and I have got to say:

What a cop-out.

As if a deus ex machina ending weren't bad enough, she rubs our noses in it with lines like "We'd better be careful how we think of ourselves now that we've become omnitemporal; we don't want to end up like the stereotypical pure energy beings." or "The armies stood, expecting a bloody final battle. And if this were a science fiction novel, it might have turned out that way."

But no, the Father (Edward), the Son (Alec), and the Holy Spirit (Nicholas) --- the latter two originally with the Father in one body but borne by the Virgin (Mendoza) [and I mean "virgin" here to mean that they were implanted in her womb] --- become omnipresent, omnitemporal beings who suspend time at the moment before the battle and make all the weapons of the world disappear. Alec does a Lazarus on some innocent passerby who was killed before the main melee. Just in case we miss it, she points out the empty graves, the immortals talk about the End of Days, etc.

There are elements that had me wistfully thinking back to other, better novels. I was pining for Good Omens and the way in which its absurdity stuck to the rules that Pratchett and Gaiman set out --- even when they were more explicitly "Christ Stops Armageddon" than Baker is. Mendoza's bizarre menage a quatre with her two sons and their father-who-is-also-them made me long for the simpler incestuous bedsharings of Heinlein's characters. And so on.

So fine. The world doesn't end, the bad guys kill each other; the good guys agree to stop time traveling into and communicating with the past; Lewis and Kaligula (or whatever his name is) are back, healed, and happy.

But I'd have been happier myself if they'd had to work for it. ( )

This was a satisfying culmination to The Company series. ( )

The forces gathering to seize power finally move on the Company. The immortal Lewis wakes to find himself blinded, crippled, and left with no weapons but his voice, his memory, and the friendship of one extraordinary little girl. Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, resurrected Victorian superman, plans for world domination. The immortal Mendoza makes a desperate bargain to delay him. Enforcer Budu, assisted by Joseph, enlists an unexpected ally in his plans to free his old warriors and bring judgment on his former masters. Executive Facilitator Suleyman uses his intelligence operation to uncover the secret of Alpha-Omega, vital to the mortals' survival. The mortal masters of the Company, terrified of a coup, invest in a plan they believe will terminate their immortal servants. And they awaken a powerful AI whom they call Dr Zeus. This web of a story is filled with great climaxes, wonderful surprises, and gripping characters many readers have grown to love or hate.

Well, the roller coaster ride is over. The series is finished. And wow, what a ride it was.

Considering that Baker had about eight different factions (I'm not 100% sure how many, I kept losing track) all making plans for what would happen at the moment of Silence, I am highly impressed by the way she brought everything together and made it all fit together.

In a way, the solution was startlingly simple after all the machinations involved in getting there. I sort of feel like it should have been a little anti-climatic, but it wasn't. Instead, we slipped neatly into the resolution and fitted there rather nicely.

The main story of Mendoza and her men continues apace. I was terribly worried about Edward and what he was going to do by the end of the previous book, and again, Baker works out a neat solution. At it's topmost level, there's a little bit of a 'squick factor' in what she does, so I was very impressed with the way she made everything fall into place. This all led to a most delightful epilogue of a few paragraps that really summed up Mendoza's "happy ending". (And the opportunity this provides to totally disconcert Joseph was a delight.)

I also thought the reason for the Silence, once we found out what it was, was so beautifully simple it was totally brilliant.

I did get a little lost at one point, but as it was the moment when she jumped from "science" to "super science" I'm willing to take the blame myself and say that my brain failed to make the jump with the author. I still got the whole drift of where she was going and I'm happy with that, but I'm sure I missed some nice subtleties. However, give me a few years and I'm sure I'll be reading the series again (if I can get my grubby little paws on copies of the earlier books) so hopefully it will make more sense then. I find that that is usually the case for me.

I also found myself reading this book in small snippets instead of digesting in whole in one big gulp as I did with the earlier volumes. I think this was a combination of two thing - my health at the time and the fact I didn't want the story to end almost exactly as much as I wanted to find out the end of it. This didn't hurt my reading at all and I enjoyed my progress through the book and the ending.

So even if I did get a little confused for a bit, The Sons of Heaven got fully marks from me and the series as a whole would get a very solid 9/10 from this satisfied reader.

The Sons of Heaven
Kage Baker
10/10

As a reminder and guide, the full series is:
In the Garden of Iden
Sky Coyote
Mendoza in Hollywood
The Graveyard Game
The Life of the World to Come
The Children of the Company
The Machine's Child
The Sons of Heaven

There are also two books of short stories - Black Projects, White Knights and Gods and Pawns. All the stories are fun, but I feel the only one you really need to read to help the series make sense is Welcome to Olympus, Mr Hearst in Gods and Pawns. ( )

The Company-- known as Dr. Zeus, Incorporated in its final form-- has sent its immortal cyborg operatives sneaking through the interstices of recorded history all the way back to the Paleolithic, preserving art, literature, cultural information, and extinct species for their own profit. The operatives all work within the Temporal Concordance, the collection of all recorded history... which terminates in the Silence, on July 9, 2355. No one knows what will happen on this day, and many are preparing for it-- some with monstrously dangerous conspiracies, some as loose cannons, largely in ignorance of each other's schemes. Baker weaves together the plot threads of her tales of the Company to a very satisfying finale. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2007/07/37-sons-of-heaven-kage-baker.html ( )