2006 science fiction, seventh of The Company series. Alec
Checkerfield forges ahead with his plan to rescue the Botanist Mendoza
and take on the might of Dr Zeus and the Company. But he's not
entirely himself, because his two past lives are sharing residence of
his mind and body…
It's difficult to say much about this book, because it depends
entirely on the revelations in previous volumes, and I encourage the
reader to discover these in their proper time and order. But for me
this is a bit of a rough spot in the series; it has some excellent
comedic moments, like a supermarket shopping expedition and the Most
Gruesome Beer Fridge Ever, but all of the characters are written very
differently from the way they have been before. Some of that is
explained by amnesia, but the ones who aren't amnesiac are very much
less sympathetic than they've been before.
"I have been disputing with myself," he said, "since I have awakened
into this unnatural life of horrible marvels, on the nature of
Almighty God."
"And how doth that make thee feel, lad?" inquired the Captain.
It's a shame, because they're still written very competently; the
time-travelling adventures to set up various lurking horrors that will
attack the Company in 2355, when the Silence hits and nobody knows
what happens afterwards, could be and often are fascinating, but I'd
rather they had happened with the characters as I've grown to enjoy
them over the course of the series, rather than these broken versions
of them. Well, Suleyman's just about holding things together.
There's also nothing about Labienus, Nennius, Victor, Lewis, Nan and
Kalugin… lots of people are missing, and I found myself impatient to
hear from them.
This is very much a bridging book, getting people where
(geographically, temporally and mentally) they're going to need to be
for the final volume, but like middle volumes of trilogies that
doesn't mean it shouldn't have its own story too; and it really
doesn't. And Mendoza in particular is far too passive here to be
really interesting.
Weakest of the series, alas. Followed by The Sons of Heaven.
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