The Life of the World to Come

THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME (Kage Baker) - Three Stars

The fifth book (of eight?) in Kage Baker's "The Company" series details the life of Alec Checkerfield, the third—uh, shall we say "incarnation"—of Mendoza's lover (Nicholas in "The Garden of Iden"; Edward in "Mendoza in Hollywood").

Most of the novel is pretty interesting: an almost LeCarre-ish cloak-and-dagger story of Alec (and his best friend, "The Captain," a sentient A.I. in the persona of a 16th-century pirate) trying to unravel his connection to Dr. Zeus, Inc. and the company's secrets. It details how Alec unravels his past(s) and steals a time machine (and, in rather contrived fashion, stumbles across Mendoza, trapped 150,000 years in the past). There is also a side-story that uncovers the mind-set and workings of three movers and shakers in the company. By the time the book wraps up it feels like it's close to the denouement, so I'll be interested to see how Baker stretches/delays the plot arc through three more novels.

In my last Kage Baker review, someone warned me that the story goes off the rails here. Well... not yet. There is a point of concern for me towards the end of the novel, when Alec meets his previous selves. I still have mixed feelings about this plot twist and how it was executed. But the series hasn't nuked the fridge just yet.

A side note: Christmas brought many books, so hopefully there will be more reviews in the New Year. The five currently on my nightstand:
Everything is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer) (currently reading)
The Famished Road (Ben Okri)
Black Swan Green (David Mitchell)
World War Z (Max Brooks)
The Book of Jhereg (Steven Brust)

Love in the Time of Cholera

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) - One Star

What could go wrong, right? Marquez has four three-star or higher rated books on my bookcase already, and this is one of his most acclaimed novels. I'm sure to like it, right?

Or not.

Here's how the book starts: old man (Juvenal) dies, second old man (Florentino) proclaims his love to first old man's widow (Fermina), flashback of young Florentino wooing young Fermina and failing, flashback of young Juvenal wooing the young Fermina in a relatively similar fashion and failing. Boom, there's 125 pages. The novel is less than 350 pages long, so in the first third of the story you learn... NOTHING! Florentino as a young man was a hopelessly love-struck buffoon, Juvenal as a young man was obsessed with sanitation, Fermina as a young woman was an unapproachable ice queen. 125 pages summed up in one sentence.

I had never understood a complaint I'd heard from others about J.R.R. Tolkien: "too much description of scenery." I understand it now. The cities and landscapes are detailed down to the minutest detail in the first third of this novel, but only the minutest character development and plot is given to the reader. Massive fail.