Mendoza in Hollywood / Kage Baker

 

Mendoza in Hollywood by Kage Baker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If ever you start to think that immortality sounds like a great idea, read this book first before committing yourself to anything. I personally hope that I don't see my 90th birthday, and not just because I anticipate that my body will have given up by then. I fervently hope I don't outlive my interest in life. Baker's immortal Company employees don't have the physical or mental deterioration to worry about, but there are still psychological issues to be dealt with. Mendoza has had a particularly rough go of it, falling in love with a mortal who was doomed to die. At the book's beginning, she is apathetic and misanthropic.

This is the side of things never broached in all the paranormal romances. True immortals have to learn to disengage their emotions, rather than bond with temporary beings. Baker finds an interesting way to reinvigorate Mendoza's will to live and love. It was reminiscent of She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard, where Ayesha, another immortal woman, awaits the return of her lover Kallikrates. It's an idea used in a lot of fantasy fiction, the recurring or reincarnating person.

There are more books in the series, so I assume that, despite her situation at book's end, Mendoza continues to feature in the action. The focuses on the mental health of cyborgs and on the recurrence of certain people through history both tend to distract from my questions at the end of book two. What exactly is the Dr Zeus Company up to? They seem to have fooled even their 24th century employees. The final pages of this volume seem to suggest a detailed, complicated plan of action, but we don't know who the mastermind is. (It also made me think of Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, where a man writes out poetry from memory and finds out later that he must have been the historical poet, leaving the circular dilemma of who actually authored the poetry?)

Next task: source the next book, The Graveyard Game.

Book number 398 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.

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