Sky Coyote

by Kage Baker

I had actually sworn off this series after reading the first, In the Garden of Iden. However, Andrew enjoyed the first book, and so this one was lying around the house and I decided to try it. How odd that the style of this novel is so much different from Iden. I quite liked this one, whereas Andrew did not.

In this novel, Mendoza’s presence is secondary, and instead we focus on Joseph, a facilitator who has been with the company for thousands of years (he was also the one who recruited Mendoza, and was there on her disastrous first mission). His job is to impersonate the coyote god of the Chumash, a native North American tribe that the Company has decided to preserve.

At first I was bothered by the dialog. The Chumash talk like modern-day teens, but I can imagine that Baker decided that making up a dialect could be tricky and potentially more jarring than using a more modern style. In the end, I quite liked this novel, and may seek out more.