The Company We Keep

I just finished reading "The Sons of Heaven" by Kage Baker. It is an entry in her series often referred to as The Company; it wasn't until the end of the book that I realized that it is, essentially, the last book in the series. From some light online research, it sounds like she did publish subsequent works after this, but The Sons Of Heaven definitively wraps up all the major plot threads and character arcs she had been working on up to this point, and I think the later novels are a fresh start.

 

It's been a long, leisurely and enjoyable journey through these books. Looking back through my archives, I started with the first book just over a decade ago. These have become sort of comfort books to me. Not in the sense of being soothing books - there is a fair amount of violence, heartbreak and tension throughout the stories - but they're very readable, fun, with great characters, good worldbuilding and a nicely twisty plot. For a while I was reading them in tandem with Charles Stross's Merchant Princes books, and more recently with his Laundry Files. Just, y'know, a good series! I think we all want some of those.

MINI SPOILERS

I haven't been blogging about each entry; I think I have a hard time writing up stories that end in obvious cliffhangers with the next entry waiting for me to read. Because I've been reading these over such a long period of time my memory feels a bit hazy at points, but I'm also surprised at just how clearly I can remember a lot of things, particularly the supporting characters: Literature Specialist Lewis, Regional Director Suleyman, Labenius, Chatterji, Billy Bones and more. The Sons of Heaven doesn't spend a lot of time recapping things or re-introducing characters, so I was glad to have retained as much as I did.

MEGA SPOILERS

I am impressed that she was able to wrap everything up so neatly. I'm used to other series, fantasy in particular, that sprawl out exponentially as they get further along, to the point where two new plot threads get introduced for every one that gets resolved. The complexity of The Company has definitely expanded over the course of the series, as we've learned that some of the core axioms are actually flexible and gotten to know various vying factions among the immortals. But by this point all the pieces are on the board, and she can focus on making them move in a satisfying manner.

The one big introduction that felt "new" here was the literal Dr. Zeus. That's been one of the odd things about the series. In the first couple of books, you have the vague impression that the human members of The Company are incredibly intelligent, not just in their scientific acumen but as incredibly talented schemers, planners and manipulators. Then you eventually get to meet the humans, and they're... pretty lame. Childish, peevish, picky, easily startled, lacking in culture or grit or just about any redeeming virtue. How did these dummies get to run everything?

We eventually learn that, at the behest of one of the (secretly disaffected) servant cyborgs, the humans opted to make The Company's database (the "Temporal Concordance") into a self-aware artificial intelligence. This parallels Captain Morgan, the Pembroke Playmate given to Alec some books ago that turned into an incredibly powerful (and humorous, and caring) AI. Because Dr. Zeus has sprung from the time-traveling historical record, he doesn't just turn into an AI: he's an omnipotent and omnipresent AI that, after he has been created, has always existed in the past and has been responsible for all the actions and decisions taken thus far.

Physically, Dr. Zeus manifests as a lifesize statue of, well, Zeus, in his Artemision depiction. This is a fairly chilling character, who SPEAKS IN ALL CAPS and seems to know what everyone is thinking before they say it.

Jumping ahead a bit (well, a lot), Captain Morgan and Alec's several-books-long plot comes to fruition, as the various bombs and things they've hidden throughout space and time all erupt into a massive assault on Dr. Zeus. He ends up not getting a whole lot of "screen time" or putting up much of a fight, at least from what we can see, although it does sound like the Captain has his hands full dealing with him.

The most interesting part of this book, to me, are the various cabals among the immortals. I get the impression that most cyborgs aren't really affiliated with any of them and are just on the sidelines watching. There are two "bad guy" factions, one that wants to enslave humanity, the other that wants to exterminate them, led by Labenius and... hm, I'm blanking on the other guy's name. Then there's the "good guy" faction, led by Suleyman, that wants to free the cyborgs from human control but to coexist peacefully with them.

Outside of them are the core characters of Mendoza and the various manifestations of Nicholas Harpole / Edward Fairfax / Alec, along with the Captain and his lackeys. Mendoza has usually been one of my favorite characters, but these sections of the book were relatively less interesting to me. The concept of what's happening is pretty stunning: in the previous book, Edward succeeded in tricking Nicholas and Alec, stealing Alec's body and partitioning away their minds. In this book, Mendoza and Edward wed, Edward becomes immortal, and then Mendoza becomes pregnant with two cloned children bearing the full consciousness of her former lovers. They are born, and a lot of the book is given over to raising this very strange family.

There are a lot of other plot lines as well. I was particularly moved by the plight of Lewis, who had been cruelly sacrificed to the Kin, who seem to be a race of aliens / gnomes who have created most of the actual inventions of The Company. He was experimented on and left for dead as part of a plot to develop a means to permanently destroy the immortal cyborgs. He is found, rescued and eventually rejuvenated by the unlikely named Princess Tiara, one of the Kin. This seems like an homage to Arabian Nights, and I really enjoyed how it played out.

Oh, and there's also Budu, one of the ancient Enforcers who fought the Great Goat Cult, and Joseph, who is helping Budu in his quest to take down the faithless mortal masters. This plot line surprisingly also includes William Randolph Hearst. This isn't the first time a historical figure has entered the story - we've already met Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson and lots of other folks - but Hearst is unusual; apparently he figured out about the existence of the Company, approached them, and became the only person from the past to become a Company shareholder and the only adult to become an immortal cyborg. Watching Joseph and Hearst interact is pretty interesting; Joseph is playing a very particular role, like a 1920s newsie, all "Gee whiz, mister Hearst!" even though they both know what Joseph is. Budu and Joseph fill in Hearst on "the silence", the plot of the mortal masters to destroy all cyborgs in 2355, so Hearst comes over to their side and proves invaluable in collecting equipment and information for their scheme. He's one of the few new characters to be introduced and make a major impact in this novel. (At least I think he's new, I don't recall him from the other books, but it's been a while.)

Everything comes to a head on Santa Catalina Island, and again, it's a lot of fun: good action, scheming, plans executed or thwarted, betrayals and double-betrayals, redemption, catharsis. One of the core concepts for the entire series is that nobody knows what happens after The Silence, so there's a lot of genuine tension and drama heading into the climax. I suspected that the series would have a happy ending, but it really could have gone in any direction and felt meaningful.

One last note: the epilogue is narrated by Joseph, and man, I'd forgotten just how much I love his voice! He hasn't been very present lately, and it's a shame, he has such a wonderful point of view: cantankerous, world-weary, sarcastic, but with a grudging deep-seated love for humanity. It did make me wish he could have narrated more of this book, but that wouldn't have worked with all the different storylines and perspectives on display. It does kind of make me want to go back and re-read Sky Coyote, though.

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So, yeah! It's been a great journey through The Company novels, and I'm glad to see them through to a proper conclusion. I know that Kage Baker has written some other novels, including a few in The Company's universe; I also should go back and finish her House of the Stag series, which is where I first was introduced to her. Sadly she's no longer with us, but I'm glad she left such great books behind!

Archived

I don't consistently write about series I read - sometimes they feel too ephemeral, other times I want to see how a whole arc plays out before organizing my thoughts. It looks like it's been about five years since I last checked in on Kage Baker's fantastic Company series. I'm slowly but surely making my way through, and really enjoying it. I just finished reading Black Projects, White Knights, which is the first short story collection in that series. Some of the stories sounded very familiar, and I eventually realized that they had been included as passages in one of the novels (perhaps "Life of the World to Come"?). These particular stories were very fun romps, especially as explicit riffs on literature. Thanks to the time-traveling conceit of the story, we get some great little vignettes about Robert Louis Stevenson, Shakespeare and other historical figures, as well as some great lore-expanding stories set in the very ancient past or the somewhat-distant future.

 

 

I've also kicked off a new series by Charles Stross, who has become one of my go-to authors for enjoyable reads. The series is "The Laundry Files"; the first volume is "The Atrocity Archives" which also includes the novella-length "The Concrete Jungle". The basic conceit is that magic is real, and being kept under wraps by secretive government agencies. The overall feel is kind of like Lovecraft crossed with James Bond crossed with Dilbert. The plot of this particular story gets pretty bonkers, quickly getting to the jaw-on-the-floor point I reached around book three of Merchant Princes. The book is also reminding me of what initially attracted me to Stross, his deep familiarity with computers and technology. Much like Halting State, there are great and fully legible sections here dealing with TCP/IP routing, blinkenlights, kernel security, daemons and more.

 

Lastly, while it isn't a series, I'll note here that I enjoyed Roberto Bolaño's "Last Evenings on Earth", a collection of his short stories. They cover a wide assortment of styles and settings. Some are minimal plot-heavy sketches, others quietly and contemplatively explore a character's soul. Many of the stories only use letters for characters - like "B wrote an article about A's novel" - which at first glance makes this seem more like a draft than a finished story, but also gives a feeling of abstractness, or maybe eternity, as if it's discussing generalized relationships rather than a particular meeting, even though these stories are still filled with detail. My favorite is probably "Henri Simon Leprince", about a talentless poet who improbably performs heroic deeds during the French Resistance.

 

Beach Reads

I kind of vacillate between this blog being a record of all the stuff I've read / played / whatever, and just being a pressure valve for when I have something in particular I need to get off my chest or I want to work through some ideas. In the earlier days of this blog I would occasionally put together round-up posts that minimally checked the boxes for media I'd recently consumed. This is something like that! Mini spoilers on each topic below.

I've continued working my way through two fun real-world-but-also-science-fiction-y series. The first is the Company by Kage Baker. I previously wrote about In the Garden of Iden and Sky Coyote, and just finished Mendoza in Hollywood. Mendoza is a wonderful protagonist, and it's really cool to see her continue to mature and adapt to her role. She's nowhere near as cynical as Joseph, but is slowly moving in that direction. This novel was especially interesting because it felt much more focused on Company employees, unlike the first two which (as I recall) paid more attention to the natives. We're getting a better sense of the very broad range of personalities among the Immortals and their various goals and quirks. I'm also really digging the development of the overarching mythology. This series had very specific rules laid down from the very start, and we're now getting more and more indications that those rules aren't as absolute as they once seemed. It's a long series and I'm not in a particular rush to get through it, but I'm getting more intrigued the further I get.

Also, as promised, I'm continuing to make headway in Charles Stross's Merchant Princes series. The writing gets better and better with each book, especially the dialogue, which has been getting more natural while still being fun and snappy. My favorite aspect, though, is the gonzo approach to plot. The stakes keep on getting raised to higher and more ludicrous levels, with (mega spoiler) interdimensional weapons of mass destruction and the recent revelation of Dick Cheney as the latest grand villain. The characters are a lot of fun too: the supporting actors can seem a little thinly sketched at first, but across multiple novels they've had plenty of opportunity to grow more complex and endearing. But Stross also doesn't have any hesitation about killing off beloved characters for dramatic effect. The most frustrating thing about these books is their cliffhanger endings, which are really egregious even for thrillers. I'm slightly tempted to wait until the series is officially over before going any further, but may not be able to hold out, we'll see!

A few months ago I played and loved Butterfly Soup. I didn't give it its own post... it's pretty clear that the game wasn't created for me, and I don't think I have much of value to say about it, but I thought it was incredibly charming and thought-provoking and kind of inspiring. Min in particular is an incredible character, and I couldn't help laughing at almost everything she says: she's a tornado packed into a tiny human body, throwing all of her passion and fury at anything that gets in her way. It's especially great to see how the game interface can uniquely enhance her presentation: little touches like the way the screen shakes whenever she speaks do a lot to enhance her surreal qualities, and is a wonderful use of this medium.

(End spoilers!)

It'll probably be a little while before my next media post. Continuing my recent nonfiction reading on economic topics, I just picked up the famous Piketty book on Capital in the Twenty-First Century. I'm pleasantly surprised at how readable and engaging it is: I was expecting a more dense financial tome, but it's clearly written for a general audience, structured very clearly, with patient and welcoming language. It's also been a fun surprise to see so much attention paid to plots and characters from novels by Jane Austen, Honore de Balzac and other 19th century novelists. Still, it is a long book and much less of a bedtime read than Stross or Baker, so it'll take some time for me to finish.

Coyote Point

My brain is weird. Reading Ammonite reminded me of The Company, which reminded me of Kage Baker, which reminded me that I never finished her Company novels, so I recently dove back in with the second entry in the series, "Coyote Sky". It's been several years since I finished The Garden of Iden, and my memories had faded somewhat, but I remembered enjoying the writing and the world, and quickly got back up to speed.

Again, my memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think that Sky Coyote is a funnier work, while The Garden of Iden was more focused on romance. This is mostly due to the narrators: Iden was narrated by Mendoza, while Sky Coyote is narrated by Joseph, who was a compelling character in the earlier book. Their roles are now switched, with Mendoza occasionally popping up and making an impression, but Joseph both drives the plot and provides the overall tone of the story.

MINI SPOILERS

Joseph is a lot older than Mendoza, by tens of thousands of years. He's much more cynical: near the end of the novel he has a line like "As I always say, in a hundred years who's going to care?" It's not that he doesn't care about anything: he's surprisingly loyal to the Company, takes pleasure in art (Warner Brothers cartoons, certain foods and beverages, works by Dashiell Hammett), and is fond of specific employees. But he's seen that everything fades and is destroyed, and learned the folly of attaching his happiness to transient things, so he tends to be unsentimental, even while appreciating things in the moment.

The plot for this book felt a bit looser than Iden. The action sort of drifts from New World One up to California and the Chumash village, but everything tends to go fairly smoothly and according to plan, with short-lived obstacles. It's still engaging, though, thanks to Joseph's fantastic voice and commentary. It might feel light as a stand-alone novel, but it does a great job at extending the overall arc and building out the world more.

Joseph is a master at interacting with every group of people, from Company immortals to Company mortals to the native peoples he encounters. The most interesting relations are those with the Chumash, a native Californian tribe: his main mission for the book is to save them from extinction and capture their culture for posterity. Like a lot of people, I have a fairly simplistic mental image of what pre-Columbian native American culture looked like: either a peaceful and idyllic life sustained in harmony with nature, or a powerful and violent society. The Chumash, though, are surprisingly modern: they have guilds, and trade agreements (along with an understanding of monopolistic practices and collusion), along with labor unions and vocational schools. They may live in huts and craft canoes, but their social structure is virtually identical to ours; even at the familial level, they often divorce and remarry, and a lot of them don't much care for raising kids.

The dialogue here was especially funny, mostly in Joseph's statements but also how the Chumash spoke amongst themselves. I found myself thinking of Christopher Moore, who also deploys a breezy, humorous, anachronistic style of patter in unexpected places.

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This was a much faster read than I expected, but I enjoyed it! I'm increasingly hooked on the Company, and looking forward to where the series goes from here. The mysteries have grown deeper in this book, and I'm curious to see answers to some of the questions that have been raised.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

A while back (a long while back!) I'd read and deeply enjoyed House of the Stag. It's the only book I'd read by Kage Baker, so I determined to check out more of her work. Some light research revealed that she has written a series generally referred to as The Company, so I (eventually!) picked up the first entry, In the Garden of Iden.

Unlike House of the Stag, which was a really creatively constructed fantasy novel, In the Garden of Iden is an unusual science fiction novel. It's more focused and traditional than HotS, and has a surprisingly strong romantic component. While it wasn't what I expected, I really enjoyed it... the book does a great job at setting up its universe and tells a very compelling story that is both very personal and historical.

MINI SPOILERS

The book gets off to a great start with the absolutely brazen way that it sets up its premise. This is a sci-fi novel, and it relies on two futuristic inventions, time-travel and immortality. Instead of doing the in-vogue thing of having the reader inhabit the world for a while and gradually glean the way the underlying system works, here the narrator directly lays everything out before the story even starts. You can travel to the past, and then back to your present, but not into the future. Immortality is possible, but only children can be made immortal; they will grow into adults and stay youthful forever.

The best part, though, is that you can change the past, but only in minor ways. More specifically, you can't do anything that changes recorded history. So, for example, you can't stop the Library of Alexandria from burning; but you could sneak into the library, photocopy all of the scrolls, hide them in an out-of-the-way cave, then dig them back up in the year 2500. Of course, it makes no dang sense that the determining factor in whether an event can be changed is whether it was recorded or not; except that we're reading a sci-fi novel, and so of course they can't change events that we, the readers, already learned in history class.

This neatly sets up both the premise and the sensibility of the novel. It reads like historical fiction, with lots of period details, except that the protagonists are from a sci-fi novel, with advanced technology and perfect knowledge about what's going to happen.

The narrator and main character, Mendoza, is recruited for immortality from her poor upbringing in 1500s Spain. She's a good character, and also a canny choice for the first novel in this series: because she's a young, new field operative, there's a good in-universe explanation for why other characters can explain basic things to her, like relationships between mortals and immortals or the proper protocol for dealing with potential disasters.

The Company itself is a fun invention; I really enjoyed the blasé attitude that all the experienced field operatives have. They're actors, putting on a show for "the monkeys," for whom they feel some mixture of disgust and pity. Joseph in particular is fascinating, with his self-consciously histrionic outbursts and core of utterly competent rationality. Even though all of the employees go through the same conditioning process, they're unique individuals, and end up with room to carve out their separate identities and quirks. Nonetheless, they've all been brainwashed and programmed by The Company (and are aware of this). There's a sad nonchalance to the way that Mendoza states, near the end of the novel, that she has no free will. It's hard to believe that after sharing her thoughts for the entire book, but she's declaring the reality of the world she lives in.

Once I understood the nature of The Company, I was expecting this book to read something like To Say Nothing of the Dog, another great time-traveling book by Connie Willis. Instead of hopping around between various dramatic points of interest, though, this book settles down and spends most of its time in the titular Garden of Iden, a backwater English country manor. Several plots are swirling around: The Company is trying to extract valuable botanical data while remaining undetected; Queen Mary is ushering in an attempted counter-reformation that is causing distress in much of England but is vaguely welcomed by the nominally Catholic residents of Iden; and Mendoza falls in love with a stern Protestant bookkeeper named Nicholas. The plot lines swiftly entangle, with tension mounting as heretics are burned and Nicholas grows suspicious of the guests.

I was a bit surprised by how much of the book was devoted to exploring Nicholas's character and his relationship with Mendoza, but this ends up being the heart of the novel. It felt a bit like Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre at times, with Mendoza the bright and resourceful young woman and Nicholas the outwardly dour young man. But here, they form a union much sooner, and the book is more devoted to exploring the aftermath of their relationship. Mendoza is living a lie, and Nicholas has a sense of the deception, but their attraction is strong enough that they feel compelled to continue despite the risks.

Random thoughts:

I'm still a bit unclear about exactly what was going on at the beginning of the book. After the introduction, I'd assumed that the rich lady and her followers who purchased Mendoza were Company agents. Their later capture and interrogation seems to contradict that. Still, I'm left wondering if that might have just been the first stage in Mendoza's recruitment: they were maneuvering her into a situation where she would be sufficiently psychologically desperate for the next stage of her conditioning. If that's not the case, then just what were they? Witches? A religious minority? We never get a clear answer; presumably Joseph knows the whole story, but he never hints to Mendoza that it was anything other than what it seemed.

This is probably just me making stuff up, but part of me wonders if Sir Walter might later become Walter Raleigh. Pretty much just because of the similar name, but the dates are intriguing as well: Walter Raleigh's birthdate is disputed, and Sir Walter has aged into a younger body, and apparently will remain youthful for some time. His vigor and ambition seem well-suited to becoming an explorer and adventurer. Alternately, I could imagine the young child from the Christmas feast growing into this man; Mendoza seems to pay particular attention to him, although nothing important about his future is revealed in the novel. 

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This was a really fun read, and I'm curious to see where the story goes from here; this episode is definitely neatly wrapped up at the end, but there's almost endless potential with the scenario Kage Baker has created. I could see us continuing to follow Mendoza's career throughout linear time, or jumping around to see different operatives at different eras, or even a bigger-picture view that shows the actual people behind The Company. It's always nice to have something new to look forward to.

The House of the Rising Stag

The House of the Stag is one of the most original fantasy novels that I've read in years.  It contains some pretty standard tropes, like magic and quests and curses and castles, but more so than any other modern novel I can think of, it directly explores the space between modern fantasy and its cultural predecessors: myths, fables, and religion.  HotS is a fantasy novel that manages to feel like something entirely different, and because of that is completely charming and fascinating.


MINI SPOILERS

One of the things I liked best about this book was how it shifts literary style throughout the novel.  It doesn't slip around in an ad-hoc manner; rather, each section picks a unique idiom, and then sticks with that voice throughout.

The prologue essentially narrates a series of hieroglyphs.  We learn the story of a peaceful tribe that lived in a valley; how they were attacked and enslaved by ferocious horsemen; how a prophet arrived to provide hope to the people; and how two brothers followed different paths to stop the horsemen, and the tragic ends reached by each one.  Everything here is very simply and very powerful, such as the utter evil of the riders or the pure determination of Gard.

The first long section is framed by a series of bureaucratic records.  These describe Gard's life as a slave, denoting the moments when he was reassigned to different duties or assigned to a master.  The bulk of the story is told in conventional third-person limited omniscient narration, allowing us access to Gard's perspective as he puzzles out the system that holds him captive.

Now, you can read this part in a straight-forward manner, and get a kick out of a great story.  This may have been my favorite section of the book, and it's fun to cheer for Gard in his quest.  However, it's fascinating to think of this story as something that has been reconstructed.  In the prologue, you can imagine someone seeing those cave drawings, and then inventing a story to explain them.  Similarly, in the first chapter, you can imagine someone stumbling across the slave record book, noticing the unusual assignments given to Slave 4372301, and then constructing a narrative that would connect those dots and tell a story.  This is a pattern that repeats throughout the book: small, rather direct data points string throughout a chapter, and a much richer and more interesting story grows up around them.

The next, much shorter chapter shifts into a first-person narration.  Here we learn first-hand the story of how the Prophet's prediction of a savior child was proven true, how that child led the people to freedom, and what happened to the people on the other side of the mountains.  Here, it's pretty impossible to not think of religious stories when reading about the events.  There are obvious parallels to Christianity - you have a prophet, a message of peace, deliverance from a land of oppression, a pure child with no father (or, in this telling, mother) who offers salvation.  Now, I don't think that this is meant to be a satire of Christianity - it's far too respectful for that.  It's kind of a sly subversion in some ways, particularly as the story progresses.  Mostly, I think what the author is enjoying most here is seeing how real events get turned into stories.  I mean, if you were to, say, travel back in time and follow around John the Baptist for his career, you would see far more of him than is captured in the Bible.  He must have said thousands of things, encountered tens of thousands of people, lived an incredibly rich and varied life.  We don't see all of that, though: all that is left to us of John the Baptist are a few chapters in the New Testament.  So: what was the point at which the physical reality of the person of John the Baptist transmuted into the prosodic snapshot of him that we see in the Bible?  What was the result of that transformation?  Did people who knew John argue about the meaning of his statements?  Did they dispute which Gospels reflected him more or less accurately?  In the course of House of the Stag, you can witness that kind of process taking place, and it's fascinating to watch.


MEGA SPOILERS

After this, we return to Gard's story, which once again is a third-person limited omniscient narration framed with an external set of data points.  Except here, those data points aren't primary source material: instead, Gard's story here is presented as a play.  The curtain rises, actors stride upon the stage, and the audience listens raptly to learn of the Master of the Mountain.  The body of this story also focuses upon the theater in a variety of ways.  Gard now lives in a state of freedom and exile, and must disguise himself in order to survive.  He learns how to speak and act like the Children of the Sun.  Later, he learns how to actually act - he joins a theatrical company and auditions for the role of the hero.  He is a great success.  Then he falls into the role of the Dark Lord.  He is an even greater success.

This is, of course, SO meta.  Gard is a perfect antihero, and is both the hero (brave, determined, faithful to friends, liberator) and the villain (demon, tricky, deceitful, violent) throughout the book.  We can already sense much of this tension by this point in the book, and the play doesn't just reflect Gard's person, it also predicts what will happen for the rest of the book.

I think that this was the first part of the story where humor started to creep in.  I'd enjoyed the book up until now, but this is the first time I remember actually chuckling at some of it.  It isn't in-your-face funny, like Terry Pratchett.  It's just... really meta, really knowing, really wry.  Gard himself can be pretty funny, and grows more so when he starts making friends and finds love.

Speaking of which: once the curtain falls on this chapter, the next one moves us back towards the Yendri.  Now the story focuses on the Child, who has now grown into a woman and, in the absence of the Prophet, become the leader of the people.  The framing device here is a historical record: some monks, presumably many generations in the future, have collected what is essentially a Gospel.  This tells the story of the people, but is one step removed from the primary sources: we aren't hearing directly from the Child, or one of the disciples, but rather from someone who has heard the stories of what happened there, probably soon after the events occurred, and put together this narrative.  Once again, we're in pretty fascinating postmodern territory here.  The end of this chapter is particularly great, as it describes how the handwriting of this account changes towards the end, abruptly shifting tone.  That reminds me of, say, the end of the Book of Mark, which had a section added to the very end after its earliest version was written.

The religious parallels are back here and stronger than before.  If the first part of the Child's story was Old Testament in tone - prophecy, deliverance, the promised land - this section is pure New Testament, and more specifically, smack dab in the epistles.  As the people grow in number and gradually scatter, dissension arises among the disciples.  All claim to love and obey the Child, but each has their own ideas about how to organize themselves, whether to arm themselves, how to deal with other tribes, whether to trade, whether to profit.  The Child speaks with them, but after a while is compelled to begin writing letters to express her teachings to her far-flung followers.  It's impossible to avoid thinking of Paul's exhortations here.  Even the subject matter is often the same: scolding people for quarreling with one another, reminding them of what is important, urging them to stay focused on important spiritual matters and not grow distracted by the world's temptations.

That said, this is one of the parts where there might be a little satire taking place.  I'm not sure if I can really talk about the "faith" or the religion of the Yendri.  It's mainly devotion to the Child, who in turn promotes uplifting teachings: kindness to one another, love of beauty, and so on.  Of course, many people will say that there wasn't a religion of Christianity while Christ was alive; the religion only came after He left, and His followers were left to argue over His teachings amongst themselves.  In this view, we can see the Yendri "faith" as something that is being born within the book, that will later be codified and become a mystical, religious following, rather than responding to the person right before them.

Anyways: the satire.  One way in which the Child is the polar opposite of Paul is when it comes to the nature of the world's temptations.  Paul famously wrote that it would be better if all were like him (i.e., celibate), and to this day many people struggle over how to interpret his writings on the status of women within the church.  In contrast, The Prophet in this book is serially UNcelibate, joyfully sleeping with any of his female disciples who wish it.  The Child is a reluctant virgin, but she rejects the teachings of her disciples who argue that men should remain apart from women.

So.  Lots of interesting religious parallels going on.

The final section of the book finally brings together all the plot threads throughout the book: The Blessed Child, Cursed Gard, the mages of the mountain, the armies of the Children of the Sun, hordes of demons, the Trevani.  Everything comes together, and - it all works.  It all clicks.  It has the excitement and drama of a modern fantasy novel, but by this point it has earned much of the depth and weight that we tend to attach to older and more traditional literary styles.  And it's funny, too.  You can almost imagine a situational comedy focusing on the grumpy Dark Lord in a skull-adorned castle, and his clever wife who tries to make things better.

I really don't want to give anything away, even in a mega spoilers block, but I was thoroughly impressed by the sheer storytelling prowess on display.  I don't think there was a wasted scene anywhere: everything serves to heighten the drama, to entertain us, to propel the story towards its inevitable conclusion while keeping the nature of that conclusion shrouded from sight.


END SPOILERS

In case you can't tell yet, I really, really liked this book.  I hadn't even heard of Kage Baker before Scott tossed me a reference to this book (thanks, Scott!), and now I'm smitten.  From the little that I've heard, it sounds like her first fantasy book was quite a bit different from this one.  I'll still check it out at some point.  Now that Baker has written The House of the Stag, I kind of doubt that anyone else will try to cover this same ground; she's done such a great job of playing with the forms, content, and style of non-literary fantasy that it would be almost impossible to top her.