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| Sky Coyote (The Company) | 
 enlarge | Author: Kage Baker
Publisher: Tor Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $9.47
You Save: $6.48 (41%)
New (20) Used (7) from $7.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 404646
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 0765317486
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780765317483
ASIN: 0765317486
Publication Date: November 27, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: brand new, in a perfect condition . soft cover. ship fast.
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 40 | | ... 8 NEXT » |
 Brilliant and Funny August 6, 2008
Kage Baker has a unique sense of humor that has caused me to laugh out loud on several occasions. Despite being a book with time travel it makes no absurd claims (aside from the premise of time travel). Paints an eerily likely view of a dystopian future.
More enjoyable than the first! March 2, 2008
While I enjoyed In the Garden of Iden, Sky Coyote I felt was far superior. Whereas Garden got off to an interesting start and then turned into a very, very slow love story, Sky Coyote holds to steady pacing, with far more humor and mystery. The story is narrated by Joseph this time, who has a lively voice especially when compared to Mendoza's brooding, introspective, almost sullen teenager one. While one story thread explores Joseph's background and drops hints about the Companies sinister motives, the other thread involving the Indian village that the Company is intent on preserving holds the threat of destructive religious fervor exploding before Joseph can spirit them away. The Chumash village is populated with excellent characters, and at the base we get to meet people from the period of the future that created the immortals. They are not what anyone expects.
Towards the end Baker sets up the next phase of the series: there are some rumors that Joseph has heard concerning Mendoza, and beyond that, no longer in Joseph's narrative, are some intercepted messages that hint at unease in the ranks of the Operatives. Future books sound like they will not be such straightforward missions. I made sure to order the next two books, instead of just one, so that I'm not left hanging!
The thing is, though, that even though I am enjoying the individual books my ultimate opinion of them is going to rest on how the series as a whole turns out. I have gotten involved in series where I enjoyed the individual episodes, but the ending ruined it for me, even to the point where I didn't even want to read the individual installments again. Hopefully, Baker will stay strong until the finish!
 Judging a book by its cover June 19, 2007
Looking at the cover art, you would get a much different idea of what the book might be about than if you read the short summary on the back. Luckily I read the summary and realized it was a story I would be interested in.
The plot idea is appealing to me, and I think I would have been much more satisfied with it had I read more of this series than just this one book; in this book, you get a snippet of the overall plot - what is happening in basically one mission in the past, rather than a more in depth understanding of the Company as a whole. Perhaps this is done in another book in the series, or perhaps the macro plot is just a construct to allow infinite possibilities of sequels, each looking at a mission in the past.
Regardless, the author's humor is often witty, and the book was enjoyable on it's own, though I don't plan to read any of the other books.
Coyote in the sky February 20, 2007
This book is more satyrical that it's apparent, and some have misunderstood it. All hepisodes are viewed through Joseph's/Coyote disenchanted eyes, the SPA of the immortals, the all-too modern-thinking Humashup ( with their quarrelling pompous priests), the fundamentalists Chinigchinix (whose monotheism is a bit exaggerated in the novel), the prissiy, squeamish health-freaks of the future. A satire of humanity's flawed ways of coming to terms with themseklves and rthe world, and a clever reflection on religion and the unfortunate effects of enforcing one's revelation to others. And bebneath Joseph/Coyote's cynicism you can feel an heart of compassion and empathy, for humanity and for grief-striken Mendoza, which we shall encounter again in Hollywood. We feel this book prophetic, as another Goat-Cult menaces today's humanity.
Mixed Bag December 4, 2006
Once again Baker draws us into the world of the Company. But this time, Sky Coyote is not told from the point of view of newbie immortal Mendoza, but from the eyes of Facilitator Joseph, whose tenure with the Company spans a lot more than a couple hundred years, but goes back more than 20,000.
It is Joseph's task (along with help from other fellow immortals, including Mendoza) to bring an entire 18th century Native American Chumash village into the Company's fold. Disguised as the Chumash deity Sky Coyote, Joseph attempts to convince the entire village of Humashup that danger is on its way in the form of white men and that he and his "sky spirits" are going to take them off somewhere to safety.
Sky Coyote was a mixed bag as stories go. Joseph's interaction with the Chumash was somewhat interesting (especially the Chumash concept of theatre), but somehow it just wasn't enough, by itself, for me to need to turn the pages. What did pull me through the story was the background on Joseph. Sky Coyote really delved into Joseph's past. Revealing how he became an immortal and giving us a fairly good, if somewhat cursory, introduction into the Company's sordid dealings with "the past".
Overall, Sky Coyote had enough there to make me want to continue with the sequels, but as a stand-alone tale, it left a bit to be desired.
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