What do You think about Mendoza In Hollywood (2006)?
Third book in the Company series; this book follows Mendoza, who is possibly the most worthless excuse for a protagonist I've ever encountered. Mendoza alternates between feeling sorry for herself, feeling bitter at everyone else, and mourning for her abusive ex-boyfriend who committed suicide two hundred years prior. (view spoiler)[About two-thirds of the way through the book, Mendoza's ex somehow shows up again, and she watches helplessly as he runs off and gets himself killed.(And then, once he dies, she goes berserk and kills everyone who was attacking him. Why couldn't she have done that before he got killed? Idiot, idiot, idiot.) Angst ensues. (hide spoiler)]
—Dan
The third and fourth books in Baker's light and entertaining Company series follow the further adventures of immortal botanist Mendoza. Located in the Los Angeles/Hollywood area, Baker lovingly recreates Civil War era California in Mendoza in Hollywood, where Joseph and his protege are reunited at a dusty, out-of-the-way stagecoach stop. While her fellow company agents keep busy, Mendoza is left own her own, still festering with hurt; it is unsurprising when the double of her long dead lover shows up and whisks her into a complex espionage plot.Mendoza in Hollywood maintains Baker's quick and sarcastic tone: her characters are pat and quirky, and the plot has nice mix of Company mystery and historical drama. Next to Elizabethan England, California clearly holds a place in Baker's heart, who relishes the chance to have her characters (and the reader) share her passion. This trick takes a tragic turn, however, when Baker devotes 22 pages to describing D.W. Griffith's film Intolerance and her characters' reactions to it. Mind-numbingly boring doesn't come close to articulating how painfully dull this chapter is; fortunately, once past this hump, the story resumes it's silly, breezy pace. Mendoza runs into a spy who is the physical double of her long dead lover, and unsurprisingly, drops everything to be with him, even aiding his espionage work. To her surprise, seemingly banal Catalina Island off the coast is key to her lover's mission, and she discovers, with devastating result, that even the Company is intensely interested in the island.The Graveyard Game takes up hundreds of years in the future; Mendoza has disappeared from the historical record, and Joseph is discovering that the future--especially the years after 2355--may not be the utopia that the Company is promising. Meeting up with Lewis, Mendoza's friend from Sky Coyote, the two begin tracking down other immortals that have gone missing. More serious than Baker's other three novels, The Graveyard Game greatly elaborates on the mystery and mythos of the Company, introducing a darker, doomsday feel to this fairly easy series.I liked both of these books, although I found Mendoza in Hollywood slow-moving at times. I've come to count on this series for when I need a quick, entertaining read and these two books fill that need well.
—Audra (Unabridged Chick)
I'm starting to lose faith in the book descriptions on the back of the re-published mass markets. They get the setting right, but the description of the plot totally off. 'finds herself in the midst of the Civil War'...not really, she repeatedly tells us that she's ignoring it, and she's in the LA area where nothing major happens. 'running into a man who strongly, compellingly reminds her of her lost love'...happens on page 250 of 334. 'She will soon find love again'...presumably happens soon after page 250?I'm becoming sure that Ms Baker's MO is to write a very long backstory and not have any of the 'real' action of the plot happen until the last 10th of the book (literally). I enjoy the settings she comes up with, I really like learning more about the world she's built (and wish there was more discussion of the science - though I think that lack of that is intentional on the series-plot scale), and I don't mind reading about characters at their kitchen tables (I loved Gratuitous Epilogue). But it does amaze me how slow the books' plots progress given how much time is covered in a given book and how few words are spent on most scenes.Also still a little on the depressing side for me. I'm sure that's very intentional.
—Emily Leathers
