In the Garden of Iden, Kage Baker
In the Garden of Iden, Kage Baker
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In the Garden of Iden
A Novel of the Company

Author: Kage Baker

Narrator: Janan Raouf

Unabridged: 11 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/13/2011

Synopsis

The first novel of Kage Baker’s critically acclaimed, much-loved series, the Company, introduces us to a world where the future of commerce is the past. In the twenty-fourth 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, Inc. 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 which will echo down the centuries, and through the succeeding novels of the Company.Breathtakingly detailed and written with great aplomb, In the Garden of Iden is a contemporary classic of the science fiction genre.

About Kage Baker

Kage Baker (1952–2010) was an artist, actor, and director at the Living History Centre and taught Elizabethan English as a second language.

About Janan Raouf

Janan Raouf, although born in the United States, grew up in Japan, Switzerland, and Holland before returning to attend Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has lived and worked as an actress on stage, film, and television on both coasts. Janan currently resides in Los Angeles.

Reviews

Goodreads review by mark

hello there, little romance. i see you! you are trying to hide, aren't you? well you picked some good camouflage, i must say. you've concealed yourself within a fairly operatic setting: the tale of an immortal teenage cyborg employed by a secretive and futuristic Company, sent on missions in our far......more

Goodreads review by Michael

Here's a book where I love the concept of the book a lot more than than execution. The concept of using time travel to go back, create a new race of immortal human beings who will then preserve certain aspects and artifacts from history is an intriguing one. The opening segments of "In the Garden of......more

Goodreads review by Lisa

This is the first book in "The Company” series and it has a wonderful premise. I love the ingenious use of time travel in the plot. The writer is an engaging storyteller and there are so many funny parts. The characters are very interesting. I love the way some real history is made part of what is l......more

Quotes

“Clever…Baker draws a colorful portrait of life in sixteenth-century England. Into this she inserts an unusual mix of mortals, all-too-fallible immortals, and a generous dollop of antic wit.” San Francisco Chronicle

“The prose is compulsively readable—it has the breezy feel of someone casually telling us a story, a feeling I associate with, say, Heinlein at his best…It’s easily on a level with Le Guin’s or Resnick’s first novels.” New York Review of Science Fiction

“So, how do you classify a seriously philosophical time-travel story of a young cyborg’s first love amid religious conflict? As a good read.” Locus

“Baker’s characterizations are robust and detailed, as is her development of the historical setting…[Listeners] will recognize in Baker a fantasist of considerable promise.” Publishers Weekly

“Janan Raouf keeps the narration light and maintains hopefulness in the character of Mendoza, which offsets some of the darkness of the times. With a steady and even pace Raouf keeps the story moving.” AudioFile

“Baker’s witty debut novel is a pip. Full of exquisite descriptions of sixteenth-century England and the Spanish Inquisition, this is a bittersweet tale of a young woman’s first love…Highly recommended.” Library Journal

“A highly impressive and thoroughly engrossing debut.” Kirkus Reviews

“Set both in the twenty-fourth and sixteenth centuries, In the Garden of Iden (the first of Kage Baker’s The Company novels) is a unique historical science fiction romance…It was a lovely performance…I do hope that Blackstone Audio will be producing more of Kage Baker’s The Company novels." FantasyLiterature.com

“The debut of a major talent. Kage Baker is a fresh, audacious, ambitious new voice, wry, jazzy, irreverent, sharp as a razor, full of daring, dash, and élan, sometimes surprisingly lyrical. She is also one hell of a storyteller. If you’re reading something by Kage Baker, fasten your seat belt—you’re in for a wild ride.” Gardner Dozois, editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction

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