These seven books (retail price $10 each) complete the Company saga begun with In the Garden of Iden and Sky Coyote. This offer places the 2007 story collection Gods and Pawns next to last in the saga's reading order, between The Machine's Child and The Sons of Heaven, because (unlike Baker's earlier collection of Company stories, Black Projects, White Knights) the shorter works in Gods and Pawns require knowledge of previous books in the series.
The Botanist Mendoza preserves extinct plants for the Dr. Zeus Company to bring into the future. Alone, she can focus on her work instead of the heartbreak of her lost mortal lover, Nicholas, who died in Elizabethan times. But sometimes the Company sends her on assignments where she must interact with other immortal Preservers or, worse, mortals.
The latest assignment brings Mendoza to 1862 California to rescue plant samples ahead a long drought. There she is shocked to meet Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, a mortal Englishman who resembles Nicholas exactly. She quickly realizes he is more than he seems. She will do anything to keep him from dying.
Facilitator Joseph has been questioning his place in the Dr. Zeus Company since the Botanist Mendoza, whom he loves like a daughter, was disappeared by the Company in 1863. Together with Literature Specialist Lewis, Joseph follows Mendoza's trail. They discover more agents who have disappeared, including the man Joseph thinks of as a father. And they uncover a conspiracy within the Company that stretches through recorded history and touches on both of their pasts.
As the two get closer to AD 2355 and the Silence (an event after which no Company agent has ever been able to travel), they uncover the origin of Dr. Zeus, along with other things the Company never meant them to know. But what will the conspirators do to keep them from finding out more – and what happened to Mendoza?
The Botanist Mendoza is stranded in the distant past, punished by the Company when she killed six mortal men for the murder of her lover, Edward – who, though he didn't remember their past, seemed to be a precise copy of her first lover, Nicholas, who also died violently. Three thousand years pass, until the monotony is broken by a timeship crashing into her cornfield, piloted by a man who resembles her dead lovers exactly – but has no idea who she is.
Alec Checkerfield, the seventh earl of Finsbury, was born in the wrong time, a puritanical future society where all pleasures of the flesh are distasteful. Raised on a sailing ship by his artificial intelligence companion Captain Morgan, Alec dreams of rebellion on the open seas. His search for meaning leads him from Mendoza to the secrets of his own nature. His path has pitted him against the Company, and rebellion may require a price he is unwilling to pay.
Executive Facilitator General Labienus's career took off in ancient Sumeria, where he was worshiped as a god and learned contempt for his mortal worshippers. Since then, he's learned how to attain power in the Company for his own purposes.
From his subversion of the ADONAI black project to his machinations in San Francisco before the Great Quake, from chocolate wars in Amsterdam to a monastery in Ireland where the Fair Folk might just be a forgotten branch of the human race, the schemes of Labienus thread through the Company's history. As the immortals draw closer to the Silence of 2355, the time to unravel them may be running out.
Alec joins the Botanist Mendoza's other former lovers, Nicholas and Edward (past versions of himself who died centuries ago) in an uneasy alliance to rescue Mendoza – uneasy because all three are stuck together in Alec's body. Helped by Alec's AI companion, Captain Morgan, they must first find Mendoza, and then discover the strange truth of their own origins. Once they know what the Company has done to them, they can start to understand its plots within plots – and how to stop it.
In the Company, you're either a God or a Pawn, but sometimes you have to be both. These eight stories chronicle exploits of the Company and its operatives, including Mendoza, Lewis, and Alec. The novella To the Land Beyond the Sunset involves a strange tribe in Bolivia whose members claim to be gods. Their ability to grow a small tropical paradise in the middle of the desert seems godlike, and it's Mendoza's job to figure out their secret. "Standing in His Light" features Van Drouten and her role in the career of the artist Jan Vermeer. With a little help from the Company, lost masterpieces can be found (or created) easily. The original novelette "Hellfire at Twilight" tells of Lewis infiltrating the famous Hellfire Club in the England of the 18th Century.
(This story collection is best read after The Machine's Child.)
In the action-packed conclusion to the Company saga, Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, Victorian superspy, plans to shape the world to his own purposes; Mendoza comes to terms with yet another transformation in her long life; Facilitator Joseph helps his father, Budu, rally an army of Enforcers long thought dead; and Literature Specialist Lewis awakens in darkness, blind and paralyzed, but helped by a very special little girl.
As the Silence approaches, factions in the Company both mortal or immortal plot for advantage in an event no one can predict. But nothing can prepare them for the world ahead.
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