Paperback, 336 pages
English language
Published Dec. 26, 2005 by Tor Books.
n the 24th century, the Company preserves works of art and extinct forms of life (for profit of course). It recruits orphans from the past, renders them all but immortal, and trains them to serve the Company, Dr. Zeus. One of these is Mendoza the botanist. She is sent to Elizabethan England to collect samples from the garden of Sir Walter Iden. But while there, she meets Nicholas Harpole, with whom she falls in love. And that love sounds great bells of change that will echo down the centuries, and through the succeeding novels of The Company.
The first book in the Company series; I was so excited to discover them. Now, I'm nostalgic since the author is no longer with us. I found her writing provocative. In the next few books Mendoza will mature, but in this one she is a teenager who will get a life lesson.
