Mendoza e Joseph
villaggio indiano
america 1700 ( )

Funny and elegiac—an engaging combination. Kage Baker is still growing on me as an author, but she sure is fun to read. ( )

I ought to be writing a positive review of 'Sky Coyote'. It's original, surprising and clever. The ideas are huge and complex. There's a vein of quiet humour through the whole thing and, underneath that a growing sense of alienation from The Company. The characters and the overall story arc move forward and we get a richly imagined historical setting.

Sounds like great Science Fiction doesn't it? And, in its way, it is great Science Fiction. It just isn't great Science Fiction that I could enjoy.

I struggled to become engaged with the story or the people in it. I think that was mostly because Facilitator Jackson tells the story in a sort of tongue-in-cheek folk myth mode. I can see that this is partly because it matches the fake Sky Coyote persona that he has taken on and partly because it echoes his own growing alienation from his work and with the people driving The Company. Whatever the reason, the effect it had on me was to keep me at an emotional distance from the story. I stayed interested in the growing doubts about The Company but in a 'hurry up and get on with it' kind of way. I found some of the 'this is how I tricked an entire tribe into believing I was their God and convinced them to walk away from everything they knew and become Company assets' a little tedious. It was clever but bloodless.

At the end of the book, I found myself admiring Kage Baker's vision and imagination but not feeling a strong urge to continue with the series, especially as the next book is set in Hollywood and so is almost bound to be another exercise in gaslighting. ( )

I don't know what to think about this book.

Baker was clearly a very good writer, and it shows in this book. But half the time this volume reminded me of nothing so much as a bunch of kids sitting around in a basement playing Dungeons and Dragons - badly. She introduces us to a primitive culture that has everything we do except electricity. The dialog used in many situations could have been from a poorly written children's book.

The only thing that saves it is the ending. Not what happens, but what we learn about the narrator. There are reasons why he would tell the story the way he did. But the preceding 30 or so chapters are so annoying, getting to that point is difficult. ( )

Mendoza e Joseph
villaggio indiano
america 1700 ( )