Yes, there are some similarities in tone between The Company and Russ' Trans-Temporal Agency. The relationship between Mendoza and Joseph is not so much like that of Irene and Ernst, though, at least in part because the Company moves operatives around a lot, so that not many develop strong ties with each other. Joseph recruits Mendoza, but they don't have the double binding of being sexual partners as well as mentor and student. And as Joseph begins to discover, through what happens to Medoza, what's been going on behind the scenes, he recognises his own status as a pawn in the plans of many of the different political factions within the company.
The more I think about the Company novels, the more I see them as, at least on one level, a profound examination of what happens when everything is commodified and you have a ruling class that is completely isolated from both the primary producers of commodities and its own workers who collect those commodities. I've read two more of the novels in the series since I wrote the comments above, and with each novel, Baker is pulling back and showing us more pieces of this very complex story.
About the Dragon Temple Saga - the books are ery difficult reading. The second novel is in some ways harder to read than the first, and even the third doesn't end with everything being made all better, although there are definite victories for Zarq personally and for the aboriginal peoples of the Kingdom. What absolutely stuns me about this series is the fusion of intense realism - there's very little that happens to Zarq, to other women, to the lower classes and to aboriginal peoples in these books that doesn't have some very real counterpart in what happens to human beings - and fantasy.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-12-19 07:25 pm (UTC)The more I think about the Company novels, the more I see them as, at least on one level, a profound examination of what happens when everything is commodified and you have a ruling class that is completely isolated from both the primary producers of commodities and its own workers who collect those commodities. I've read two more of the novels in the series since I wrote the comments above, and with each novel, Baker is pulling back and showing us more pieces of this very complex story.
About the Dragon Temple Saga - the books are ery difficult reading. The second novel is in some ways harder to read than the first, and even the third doesn't end with everything being made all better, although there are definite victories for Zarq personally and for the aboriginal peoples of the Kingdom. What absolutely stuns me about this series is the fusion of intense realism - there's very little that happens to Zarq, to other women, to the lower classes and to aboriginal peoples in these books that doesn't have some very real counterpart in what happens to human beings - and fantasy.