Kage Baker

Related to The Company (Science Fiction/Steampunk):

The Women of Nell Gwynne's — (2009) Publisher: Lady Beatrice was the proper British daughter of a proper British soldier, until tragedy struck and sent her home to walk the streets of early-Victorian London. But Lady Beatrice is no ordinary whore, and is soon recruited to join an underground establishment known as Nell Gwynne's. Nell Gwynne's is far more than simply the finest and most exclusive brothel in Whitehall; it is in fact the sister organization to the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, that 19th-century predecessor to a certain Company... and when a member of the Society goes missing on a peculiar assignment, it's up to Lady Beatrice and her sister harlots to investigate.

The Women of Nell Gwynne's

Crack open the pages of The Women of Nell Gwynne's and you will find action, mystery, and beautiful women. This novella by Kage Baker is everything a SF/F fan wishes the works of Charles Dickens had been.

The Women of Nell Gwynne's is about an elite brothel in Victorian London. Though these ladies of the night provide pleasure to the notables of the city, that is not the primary reason for their existence; They serve as a front and spy-center for a certain Gentlemen's Speculative Society, an entity which has appeared in other Baker works. Lady Beatrice, newly arrived for work at Nell Gwynne's, is promptly swept up into an adventure requiring all the skills she can muster. The ladies must find a man that the Gentlemen's Speculative Society has lost and learn what secrets his former employer, Lord Arthur Rawdon, is hiding.

This novella is thoroughly entertaining. Baker has skillfully captured the tone and feel of a Victorian novel, reading like an Austen or Dickens without an excess of flowery language or philosophical meanderings. The grammatical structure and dialogue, along with the setting, combine to make one feel as if he or she were in the very room with the protagonists. Baker has used gadgetry and technology to turn this period piece into a science fiction novel. It draws comparisons to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but rather than superhero literary characters, the protagonists are ordinary people with a desire to shape and influence world events.

Beatrice is interesting, and we get a detailed glimpse of her history as a British army officer's daughter, and her subsequent kidnap into the wilds of Afghanistan. Baker takes some opportunity here to imply that the imperial ambitions of the British in the Victorian period are similar to those of present America, but these are easily glossed over, more of "oh look: an interesting similarity" than a "here is what you should think about this."

Though Baker is writing a story about whores, she differentiates profession from character. These women are strong and intelligent, people you would want to know as friends. They are not wholly defined by what they do for a living — they are more than that. But still, this novel is for adults only because these women are frank about what they do.

The Women of Nell Gwynne's reads quickly and easily, flowing smoothly from one chapter to the next. The mystery aspect of the story reminds me of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, though with a SF twist. The fact that the tale is about female protagonists in a man-centered world allows little bits of humor: "Life for the ladies of Nell Gwynne's was, placed in the proper historical, societal and economic context, quite tolerably nice."

I recommend The Women of Nell Gwynne's for fans of Kage Baker, and for anyone who likes stories of Victorian London. Readers of Jo Walton or James Blaylock will find The Women of Nell Gwynne's to their liking, as will those classicists who read H.G. Wells religiously. Mystery fans will find much to enjoy here, as well. As for me, on this my first reading of a Baker work, I have become a fan and will eagerly seek out more of her work in the near future. —J.O.   Comments
FanLit thanks John Ottinger III from Grasping for the Wind for contributing this guest review.

Not Less Than Gods — (2009) Related to The Company series. Publisher: On a dark evening in 1824, a lady is offered a ride home in the carriage of a dark and mysterious stranger and a boy is conceived, to the strains of Beethoven's brand-new setting to the Ode to Joy. Groomed from childhood to become a perfect British hero, young Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax proceeds uncertainly through public school, a career in the navy, mutiny and court-martial before discovering his true place in life. There is, in Whitehall, a comfortable and slightly shabby club called Redking's. Downstairs from Redking's, however, is concealed the London headquarters of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society... a centuries-old fraternity devoted to the development of what its members call Technologia. Their goal is to bring about a Utopian paradise of science, through the manipulation of men and governments. Edward, as one of their agents, sets off onan odyssey across 19th-century Europe, encountering on the way flying machines, self-propelled carriages,and an Underground Galvanic Railway... and learns that the Society, in its various disguises, is everywhere.

Not Less Than Gods

Your reaction to the announcement of Not Less Than Gods by consistently excellent SF and fantasy author Kage Baker will probably depend to a large extent on how familiar you are with her The Company series. If you haven't read any of the Company novels or collections, the story of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society (GSS) and one of its operatives, Edward Alton Fairfax-Bell, sounds like an interesting and entertaining steampunk novel. However, if you're familiar with the Company series, your reaction to a novel about "Edward's creation and recruitment by the GSS, his training, and his first mission" will probably be more of the "I want it and I want it NOW!" variety, with the number of exclamation points determined by how enthusiastic you are about the main series. (I limited myself to one, to avoid the impression that this review was written by a teenage girl. Mentally, please feel free to add a few more.)

In a nutshell, the Company series deals with the operatives of Dr. Zeus Inc., a 24th century company that has discovered the secret of time travel and naturally decides to use it for corporate profit, sending quasi-immortal cyborgs back in time to collect lost art, extinct plants and so on.

One of the things I like best about the Company series is the way the information is slowly revealed throughout the series. For example, the excellent first novel in the series, In the Garden of Iden, at first reads like a more or less self-contained story about Company botanist Mendoza, but it takes on a completely different meaning when you read the later books in the series, because there's a huge story arc building up throughout the series, with layers upon layers added to the plot and the characters as the revelations build up.

The two stand-alone Company novels Kage Baker released after the completion of the main series, The Empress of Mars and Not Less than Gods, have a completely different impact depending on how familiar you are with the series, because fans already know the entire story and are now being filled in on specific aspects of it — in the case of Not Less Than Gods, the early life of Edward Alton Fairfax-Bell, who makes his first Company series appearance in Mendoza in Hollywood. In that sense, it's a bit similar to The Life of the World to Come, but about Edward rather than Alex Checkerfield. Even though it feels like a prequel, using that term doesn't make much sense in a series that deals with the nature of time travel.

Even if you haven't read any of the Company novels, Not Less Than Gods is still a very entertaining read. Kage Baker includes enough hints about the nature of the Company to make sure that new readers will have a broad idea of what's going on — or at least as much as the main characters do. Even without this, the novel is a rollicking adventure story set in the Victorian era, about a small group of GSS agents traveling across Europe and the Middle East, causing havoc and (in the process) affecting history in several ways. They're armed with an array of — for that period — advanced gadgets and weaponry, a distinct appreciation for alcoholic beverages, and a good dose of jolly-old-boy British witticisms. Young Edward is a fascinating character, different from his peers in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, idealistic, tortured, and brave. As always, Kage Baker's prose is delightfully sly, always sounding as if she is sharing a subtle joke with her readers, gradually drawing you in as she unfolds the plot.

As a long-time fan of Kage Baker, I was extremely pleased with Not Less Than Gods. If you're in the market for an excellent SF series, I'd probably still recommend starting with In the Garden of Iden first, but Not Less Than Gods is a solid addition to the Company series and works surprisingly well as a standalone novel. —Stefan   Comments